The Capitol Building Phil Roeder / CC BY 2.0 (Creative Commons)
For Years, the Federal Workforce Languished. Congress is Planning to Revive It
Taryn MacKinney,
| February 26, 2021, 4:28 pm EDT
During a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, congressional leaders and a panel of experts examined the state of the federal workforce—and talked through plans to bolster and protect civil servants in the coming years.
The last administration tried to undermine the federal workforce
To kick off the discussion, Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) highlighted the previous administration’s efforts to undermine civil servants. Three of Trump’s executive orders undermined federal workers’ collective bargaining rights, he noted, and the introduction of a new federal job classification, Schedule F, would have made it easier to fire career civil servants. The administration also tried to chip away at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by re-housing parts of it in the General Services Administration and the Executive Office of the President, “an illegal attempt to abolish the very agency that serves as our nation’s human resources hub.” Congress staved off these attempts on a bipartisan basis, but “damage remains,” said Chairman Connolly—and Congress and the president must act to reverse it.