The Office of Personnel Management last week issued new guidance for agencies as they implement regulations finalized earlier this year, strengthening guardrails on converting career federal workers out of the competitive service and to or between categories of excepted service.

Last springOPM has issued final regulations aimed at protecting the nonpartisan civil service from efforts by former President Trump, or any future administration, to reinstate Schedule F, a controversial effort to convert tens of thousands of career federal employees in “policy-related” jobs into “policy-related” jobs. excepted government service, stripping them of their civil service protections and effectively making them employees at will.

Trump has pledged to revive the initiative if he is elected president next month, and he has the support of several conservative think tanks and unofficial presidential transition plans. By 2022, activists had already drawn up a list of 50,000 career employees target conversion out of competitive service and threaten termination.

OPM regulations establish the definition of “policy-related” employment in the federal government, narrowing it to refer only to non-career political appointments, and they state that when a federal employee’s position is ” involuntarily” converted out of competitive service, he retains “the status and protections of civil service which they had already acquired.” And it grants federal workers the right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board any job reclassification that would result in the loss of civil service protections.

But despite the Biden administration’s efforts to repeal Schedule F and protect the federal workforce from future efforts to erode the nonpartisan merit system, analysts say if elected he could to have few adversaries can do to stop it. Even the April 2024 rule could easily be repealed, either after a 90-day notice and comment period or immediately with a new interim final rule.

In a note To agency heads, OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver offered guidance to agencies in implementing the new guardrails around job conversions and reclassifications, as well as how to implement a law or executive action to reclassify workers under the new system. Shriver clarified that the new measures do not apply to the Senior Executive Service, which already exists outside of the competitive service, and that the rule does not create any new appeal rights for federal workers.

“No, the final rule does not provide appeal rights for adverse actions or performance-based actions to any group of employees who did not already have this protection,” an attached FAQ states. “The rule amends (the Federal Personnel Regulations) to clarify that officials in the competitive service or the excepted service who qualify as “employees” will retain previously vested rights upon an involuntary transfer from the competitive service to the excepted service, or from one excepted service. duty schedule to another, or any subsequent involuntary move, unless the employee waives these rights or status by voluntarily encumbering a position which explicitly results in the loss of different rights or entitlements.

Shriver also included a detailed summary of how agencies should handle federal employee reclassifications in the future. If a directive to reclassify employees specifically delineates covered positions, agencies must create a list of positions to be moved and provide the list to OPM for approval.

If, on the other hand, the directive establishes criteria for the jobs that should be converted, the agency should provide a list of positions that it proposes to transfer to OPM, and it should be prepared to provide written justification for their inclusion on request. And finally, if the directive tasks agencies with developing the criteria themselves, they must provide OPM with a list of affected positions, the “objective” criteria used to select those jobs, and an explanation of how the criteria are ” relevant” and consistent” with the standards of the directive.

In cases where the directive to reclassify workers comes from either the President or OPM, the agency must wait to make the change until OPM provides written approval to do so. And in cases where Congress has initiated the reclassification effort, such as through legislation, agencies must “notify OPM of excluded positions” before the provision’s effective date, or within 30 days.

Going forward, agencies must provide written notice of a job conversion from competitive service to the affected employee at least 30 days prior to the position move. And if that move is involuntary, agencies must inform the employee in writing that they retain any competitive status they had earned before the reclassification, as well as their right to appeal the decision.