New Executive Orders Curb Civil Service Protections

White House says the action will reduce waste; others call it an assault on democracy
By Janet Cromley,  Newser Staff
Posted May 25, 2018 8:12 PM CDT
New Executive Orders Curb Civil Service Protections
President Donald Trump arrives on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 25, 2018, from Annapolis, Md.   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Trump has signed three executive orders that will make it easier to fire federal workers and will restrict the activities of unions representing them, reports the New York Times:

  • The first order reduces the time in which poor performers have to improve their effectiveness from up to 120 days to 30 days.
  • The second encourages federal agencies to renegotiate union contracts in order to reduce waste.
  • The third limits the amount of paid time that federal workers can spend on union work to no more than 25% of their working hours.

“These executive orders make it easier for agencies to remove poor performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used,” said Andrew Bremberg, the White House’s director of the domestic policy, reports the Washington Post. American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 of the nation’s 2.1 million workers called the orders “an assault on democracy.” The union also said that the orders would strip federal employees of their long-standing right to representation at the worksite as well as hurt veterans, law enforcement officers, and others, per Business Insider. The orders are consistent with a decade-long trend of Republican governors signing legislation to weaken government unions and curtail public-sector collective bargaining, notes Bloomberg. (More Donald Trump stories.)

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