Union lawsuit challenges Trump rules that harm federal workers
AFSCME and a coalition of unions have sued the Trump administration over two new personnel rules that would harm federal workers.
Specifically, the lawsuit seeks to block rules that would overhaul long-standing worker discipline and performance rules in a way that cuts at the heart of the nonpartisan civil service and threatens the jobs of public service workers.
Both rules issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) scrap decades of legal precedent and violate the laws passed to strengthen the merit-based civil service.
“Once again this administration is disrespecting public service workers to the detriment of public safety and health,” said AFSCME President Patrick Moran. “The federal workers who keep our food supply safe and air travel secure should be able to do their jobs without worrying about political hacks firing them without cause. They deserve to be evaluated based on whether they are doing a good job for our country, not pitted against one another.”
In addition to AFSCME, the union coalition includes the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. Democracy Forward is assisting with the case.
The first rule being challenged in the lawsuit, the suitability rule, lets OPM decide on its own if a front-line federal employee is “unsuitable” for their position and order them fired, taking that decision away from the agency that actually employs them.
By OPM’s own estimate, half of all federal firings will run through this system. The standards are broad and subjective enough to reach political speech, which is an open invitation to fire public service workers who speak out, without regard to their value to their agencies and to the communities they serve.
The second rule being challenged by AFSCME and others upends decades of measuring federal employee performance using objective standards, as the law requires, and instead rates them on a curve. The change would allow large numbers of high performers to be rated lower for reasons unrelated to performance, making them easier to discipline and easier to fire even when they are doing good and essential work for the American people.
“AFSCME members will fight this transparent attempt to purge even more qualified public service workers from an already depleted civil service,” Moran said.
