Portside

The malign forces trying to break the federal workforce have hit on another idea: targeting “probationary” employees.

These are employees with one year or less of service in the federal government, and in some cases, employees with up to two years of service. There are more than 220,000 of them according to one estimate, and they have weaker civil service protections than their colleagues. President Trump’s allies want to exploit that with a mass firing.

Below is the copy of an email received by employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was sent to people who “have been identified as an employee likely on a probationary/trial period.” It has been reported that agencies were asked to assemble lists of these newly hired employees.

“As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has a right to immediately terminate you pursuant to 5 CFR § 315.804,” the email reads. It claims that the termination would occur immediately upon the employee receiving notice.

That is not a correct reading of the federal code. The provision in question specifically refers to termination “for unsatisfactory performance or conduct,” not on a whim. The employee must be notified in writing of the reason why they are being terminated, and “the information in the notice as to why the employee is being terminated shall, as a minimum, consist of the agency’s conclusions as to the inadequacies of his performance or conduct.”

Nevertheless, any probationary employee who received an email like this would probably get the impression that they are on the way out with their employer.

The email does mention an appeals process through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency that adjudicates disputes among the federal workforce. MSPB didn’t have a quorum to hear cases for the entire first term of the Trump administration; it finally reached a quorum under President Biden in 2022 and has one now. But Trump has been firing other members of commissions and boards, including the National Labor Relations Board. So MSPB would be a place to watch.

But the email adds a catch, that those who do not meet the definition of “employee” under the law are not eligible for an appeal. Earlier, a memo sent to agency heads by the Office of Personnel Management asserted that probationary employees can be fired “without triggering [Merit System Protection Board] appeal rights,” and it does appear that their appeal options are more limited than more senior employees’.

The government is currently under a federal hiring freeze, so no probationary employees who are terminated could be replaced until that lifts.

About 6.5 percent of probationary employees, according to a March 2024 survey by Fedscope, were at the Internal Revenue Service. The greatest number of probationary employees, more than 25 percent, were at the Veterans Health Administration.

The target on probationary employees comes on the heels of the offer for “deferred resignation” made yesterday, giving employees an exemption from return-to-office rules and possibly a lighter or nonexistent workload (without a guarantee) in exchange for a resignation at the end of September. Along with other firings and purges, it reflects an effort to remake the federal workforce in the image of Donald Trump, with an emphasis on loyalty to the president. This reverses the building of the professionalized civil service that took hold in America in the late 19th century, and threatens to return the country to the spoils system of politicized bureaucracy.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents unionized EPA officials, sent an email to staffers, urging them to “Please do what you need to protect all of your information regarding your Federal employment … you need to download/print out all pertinent employment information such as your entire eOPF. Do this ASAP!”

The new administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, was just confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday afternoon.

[David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’]

Read the original article at Prospect.org.

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