NTEU Protects Rights of Employees from Future Attacks

NTEU has asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to clarify that employees who are unwillingly moved from the competitive service to the excepted service retain their due process rights. The last administration issued an executive order which would have shifted large numbers of competitive service employees into a new excepted service “Schedule F.”

The administration made clear that its next step would have been to attempt to fire many of those employees. Fortunately, the current administration rescinded the Schedule F order.

NTEU has been fighting on several fronts to ensure that Schedule F does not happen again. NTEU’s petition asks OPM to make clear that constitutional due process principles require that employees hired into the competitive service keep their rights even if their position is shifted to the excepted service. The petition also asks OPM to establish key procedural steps that agencies must take before moving employees into an excepted service schedule. These steps will help protect merit system principles.

NTEU will press OPM to do the right thing and grant this petition to protect employee rights.