Biden Admin Rule Aims To Make It Harder To Fire Federal Employees

(USNewsBreak.com) – Federal workers enjoy a lot of perks, including benefits, that make working for the government an attractive job. Civil servants usually enjoy some form of job security as well. Now, the Biden Administration has passed a rule that aims to make it even more difficult for these workers to lose their jobs.

In a press release dated April 4, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced it had issued a “final rule that clarifies and reinforces long-standing protections and merit system principles” for 2.2 million civil workers. The rule aims to ensure job security based on merit rather than the employee’s political affiliation.

The Biden administration announced a final rule to protect federal workers and make it harder to fire them to prevent former President Trump from gutting the workforce if he’s reelected. https://t.co/pUqiATr6vm

— The Hill (@thehill) April 5, 2024

Guidelines outlined in the rules include:

Supervisors cannot take away civil service and status protections, but workers can voluntarily waive them.
Departments must establish procedural requirements regarding the movement of positions from competitive to excepted service and within excepted service.
Supervisors must clarify the meaning of “confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating positions” to avoid classifying civil workers as political appointees.

The OPM moved to finalize the rule after considering more than 4,000 public comments on the matter. The office posted the rule for inspection on April 4 and will include it in the April 9 publication of the Federal Register.

The move seemingly came on the heels of concerns that former President Donald Trump could win back the White House later this year. In 2020, he signed an executive order creating Schedule F, which declared civil workers political appointees and negated their protections. This new rule would prevent him from signing another one in the same vein as he has expressed his intent to do during a South Carolina rally in March 2022. He said by “pass[ing] critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the” POTUS, he could bring an end to the “deep state.”