SUMMARY:  Legislation is introduced in the Senate to rescind the President’s Schedule F Executive Order to preserve the rights and protections provided to the career civil service.

Yesterday, legislation was introduced in the Senate to rescind President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) establishing a new category of excepted service employees, known as Schedule F.  As you know, this is a potentially far-reaching EO that could move tens of thousands of federal employees into the new Schedule F, which would strip them of their civil service protections and allow them to be hired and fired at will.  Schedule F would be broadly composed of “employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions.” 

Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, along with nearly 40 Democratic senators, introduced the bill (S.4907), which would rescind the EO and prohibit the use of federal funds to implement it or any successor EO.  This follows legislation introduced by Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and others last month, the Saving the Civil Service Act (H.R. 8687).  That bill would also rescind the president’s EO and prevent the use of funding to implement it, but also return positions and employees that are moved to Schedule F back to their previous designation and prevent new employees that were non-competitively hired into a Schedule F position from converting to the competitive service. 

            We applaud Ranking Member Peters and his Senate colleagues for standing up for the rights of federal employees and working to preserve the non-partisan, merit-based civil service.  NTEU will continue the fight to prevent this EO from being implemented and protect your rights.  For more information, click here.