A federal judge in San Francisco is temporarily blocking the State Department from finalizing hundreds of employee layoffs.

Judge Susan Illston approved a temporary restraining order on Thursday, preventing the department from officially terminating more than 200 employees, most of them Foreign Service officers.

Separately, federal employee unions are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association filed the emergency request for a temporary restraining order to bar the “imminent and unlawful execution” of reduction in force notices the State Department sent this summer.

“The severe threats to the public presented by the imminent State Department actions necessitate a temporary pause to protect the status quo for plaintiffs and the employees they represent who are adversely impacted by these imminent separations,” the emergency request states.

The emergency request is part of an ongoing lawsuit that unions filed on the eve of the government shutdown, which blocked the Trump administration from conducting widespread layoffs during a lapse in congressional funds.

The amended lawsuit states that several agencies, including the State Department, aren’t fully adhering to a provision in the shutdown-ending spending bill that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs.

The nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is also part of the lawsuit, said the amended lawsuit seeks to reverse “other unlawful RIF actions” at the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, as well as the departments of Education and Defense.

“Those RIFs would violate the federal legislation that ended the federal government shutdown, which prohibits implementation of any RIFs through January 30,” the amended complaint states.

The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

It also states that between Nov. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.”

Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12. The amended lawsuit states that interpretation of the continuing resolution “is significantly under-inclusive.”

Agencies recently told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.

The State Department sent RIF notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July. Most of those employees were officially separated from the agency in September.

But this Friday, Dec. 5, the department plans to officially remove nearly 250 Foreign Service employees and several civil service employees whose separation dates were postponed, because they recently gave birth or faced medical issues.

The State Department claims that the continuing resolution’s layoff protections only apply to RIF notices that went out after Oct. 1.

“Defendants are wrong,” the amended complaint states. “The plain language of the continuing resolution prohibits any actions implementing any RIFs of any employees at any agency between November 12, 2025 and January 30, 2026, and requires recission of any previously issued RIF notices (regardless of when they were issued) if the RIFs were implemented during the shutdown.”

The amended lawsuit also takes issue with how the State Department modified the official separation date for impacted employees.

Foreign Service employees were originally told they would be separated from the agency on Nov. 10,  when the agency was still affected by the government shutdown. But on that date, employees received a notice from the department’s human resources offices that said they would remain on administrative leave so the agency could correct “administrative errors.”

On Monday evening, employees received a notice that said they will be officially separated from the State Department this Friday.

“The RIF notices were not reissued, and employees received nothing further from the State Department regarding the now-expired RIF notices until December 1, 2025,” the amended lawsuit states.

The State Department’s notice to employees cites “formal written guidance” from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding RIFs that had been issued prior to the shutdown, but further implemented during or after the shutdown. The unions leading the lawsuit say that formal written guidance hasn’t been made publicly available.

“During the shutdown, the State Department continued to implement the stages of these RIFs in preparation for final separation of the employees, including by processing personnel paperwork in advance of the planned separations,” the amended complaint states.

The unions claim that without a temporary restraining order, State Department employees and their families will suffer “irreparable harm,” including a loss of income and health insurance benefits.

“For many of these employees, the imminent loss of employment means a sustained loss of income and benefits in a job market already flooded with unemployed former State Department and USAID employees,” the amended complaint states.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that “Congress clearly stated that no federal employees should lose their jobs due to a reduction-in-force for the duration of the continuing resolution.”

“This means that no RIF should be issued or acted upon, and any RIF terminations that occurred during the shutdown must be reversed,” Kelley said.

AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a statement that these “unlawful separations reveal a callous indifference to the rule of law and the people who carry out America’s diplomatic mission every day.”

The post Federal judge blocks imminent State Dept layoffs, as unions seek to reverse RIFs at other agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

Tens of thousands of blue-collar Defense Department workers are slated to receive their long-delayed 2024 pay raises. The raises were stalled for nearly a year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purge of advisory committees halted the DoD Wage Committee’s ability to authorize new wage schedules.

The DoD Wage Committee met last week for the first time this year to approve publication of 2024 updates to about 1,600 wage schedules covering 250 wage areas. 

These raises will match the General Schedule locality increases, and they will be applied retroactively according to when they should have taken effect last year. DoD workers could see the pay bump reflected in their next paychecks.

“It will probably be in the next paycheck, or possibly a separate check. It will depend on which payroll processor is being used,” Jacqueline Simon, American Federation of Government Employees’ director of public policy, told Federal News Network. 

“There might be some other agencies, like the Bureau of Prisons, Social Security, even the Department of Veterans Affairs that might be more delayed. But I’m told the Defense Finance and Accounting Service says it will be the next paycheck,” she said. 

For blue-collar federal employees under the Federal Wage System, the process of getting a pay raise is more complex than for most General Schedule employees. While the GS base pay schedule is adjusted annually each January with an across-the-board pay increase set by the president or Congress, FWS adjustments are based partly on that overarching raise and partly on wage surveys conducted by the DoD Wage Committee, which then votes to implement new schedules region by region throughout the year.

But in March, Hegseth launched a review of all advisory committees, requiring them to justify their existence. He instructed the committees to explain how their advice “benefited the DoD, the federal government, and the United States,” and how it aligned with President Donald Trump’s goals and the department’s priority of “restoring the warrior ethos.” Hegseth dismissed all members of the advisory committees in April.

The DoD Wage Committee — made up of three agency officials and two union leaders, and whose sole function is to approve wage schedules for FWS employees — has been unable to meet since then.

“We don’t provide advice per se. We look through all the data, at the way the calculations were done, make sure everything was done right, and then you vote that yes, this is okay. And sometimes it’s not okay. Sometimes there are errors and they’re found. But that’s what the DoD wage committee is,” Simon said.

“The surveys happened, the calculation and the new wage scales and wage rates were determined, but none of them could be actually implemented or paid because of the pause on the advisory committees. Everything was ready to go. So people who were due their raise in March and April and May, in June, July, August, September, none of them got their raises when they were supposed to,” she added.

Simon said the Office of the Secretary of Defense never offered any explanation of why the committee could not be exempted. “They just wouldn’t do it. They were not permitted to meet with us,” she said.

It appears that pressure from lawmakers eventually pushed the department to reverse its course.

“We certainly talked to a lot of lawmakers, and we talked to as many people in the administration as we possibly could and tried to put some political pressure on the secretary, and I guess he finally relented,” Simon said. 

The delay, Simon said, has been deeply frustrating for workers. “Across the board, people were absolutely furious. There’s no way to overstate how angry and resentful people were that this was happening. And, of course, there was a hardship, of course there was the shutdown, and then this on top of it, and it was a terrible outrage.”

AFGE estimates that more than 118,000 DoD employees are paid through the Federal Wage System.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.

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Former Environmental Protection Agency employees who were fired after signing a letter criticizing the Trump administration are now appealing their dismissals before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The six former EPA employees, who were among roughly 140 workers who signed a “declaration of dissent” in June, argued their firings were not only an illegal response to exercising their First Amendment rights, but also a form of retaliation for “perceived political affiliation,” and executed without cause.

The former employees are represented by attorneys at several law firms in the MSPB case, including the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“Federal employees have the right to speak out on matters of public concern in their personal capacities, even when they do so in dissent,” Joanna Citron Day, general counsel for PEER, said Wednesday. “EPA is not only undermining the First Amendment’s free speech protections by trying to silence its own workforce, it is also placing U.S. citizens in peril by removing experienced employees who are tasked with carrying out EPA’s critical mission.”

An EPA spokesperson declined to comment, stating that the agency has a longstanding practice of not commenting on pending litigation.

The June dissent letter from EPA employees warned that the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin were “recklessly undermining” the agency’s mission, and criticized the administration’s policies on public health and the environment. The letter led EPA to launch an investigation into employees who signed the letter, resulting in at least eight probationary employees and nine tenured career employees receiving termination notices. Dozens more who signed the declaration were suspended without pay for two weeks, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.

Justin Chen, president of AFGE Council 238, which represents EPA employees, said the firings of these employees added to a “brain drain” at EPA, on top of other workforce losses stemming from the deferred resignation program (DRP) and other actions from the Trump administration this year.

“These were subject matter experts — extremely talented people who were working on behalf of the American public to protect them,” Chen said in an interview. “The loss of these people will be felt for quite some time. And honestly, the intent of this action is to put a chilling effect on the rest of the civil service.”

A termination notice delivered to one of the EPA employees shows that in response to concerns of free speech and whistleblower protection violations, the agency’s general counsel office stated that it believed the issues raised “do not outweigh the seriousness of your offense.”

“The Agency is not required to tolerate actions from its employees that undermine the Agency’s decisions, interfere with the Agency’s operations and mission, and the efficient fulfillment of the Agency’s responsibilities to the public,” the termination letter reads. “You hold a trust-sensitive position that requires sound judgement and alignment with the Agency’s communication strategies.”

Despite the employee having a high performance rating and a lack of disciplinary history, the termination letter stated that “the serious nature of your misconduct outweighs all mitigating factors.”

“I also considered that you took no responsibility for your conduct, which reflects a lack of acknowledgment of the seriousness of your actions and raises concerns about your ability to exercise sound judgment and undermines your potential for rehabilitation,” the letter reads.

In August, EPA leadership also canceled all its collective bargaining agreements and told its unions it would no longer recognize them. The decision came after an appeals court allowed agencies to move forward with implementing President Donald Trump’s March executive order to terminate union contracts at a majority of federal agencies.

“If we still had our collective bargaining rights, none of this would have happened in the first place. We would have immediately filed grievances,” Chen said. “[With the MSPB appeal] our hope is that these employees get everything back — that they will have full reinstatement and full back pay.”

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Lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have advanced a slew of federal workforce bills, one of which aims to make some significant changes to the federal probationary period.

The GOP-led EQUALS Act was one of about a dozen bills that passed favorably out of the committee on Tuesday. If enacted, it would require new federal employees to serve a two-year probationary period, doubling the length that most newly hired or promoted currently face.

Under the bill, agencies also would have to actively certify that a probationary employee “advances the public interest” before the employee can become officially tenured, while those who are not certified would be removed from their jobs. The legislation advanced in a party line vote of 24-19.

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), who introduced the legislation, said the EQUALS Act builds on an April executive order from President Donald Trump, which similarly required agencies to review and actively sign off on probationary workers’ continued employment.

“President Trump could not be more right,” Gill said. “Probationary periods and trial periods are long-standing, essential tools to ensure newly hired federal employees are sufficiently performing before their appointments are finalized permanently.”

Democrats on the committee criticized the Republicans’ bill, arguing that extending the length of the probationary period would negatively impact federal recruitment, as well as open the doors to more terminations of new hires in the government.

“This bill would double the time during which federal employees have limited due process and appeal rights as probationary employees. During this time they could be fired within 30 days’ notice, they have limited rights to an attorney or representative and they generally cannot appeal their removal,” Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (R-Calif.) said Tuesday. “At a time when Donald Trump is attempting illegal mass firings and purging experts from agencies across our government, this bill is a dangerous step in the wrong direction.”

Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) added that the EQUALS Act would “give the Trump administration yet another tool to weaponize against federal employees who they perceive as ideological threats, and to continue efforts to destroy the non-partisan civil service.”

Gill, however, argued that the bill would not lead to mass terminations, but instead only make sure that new federal employees are carefully reviewed. He also pointed to a 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office, as well as a 2005 report from the Merit Systems Protection Board, both of which call for reforms to the probationary period.

“An employee can often work for the federal government for over 25 years,” Gill said. “Having an extra year of probationary status to ensure the right employee becomes tenured is a common sense, good government measure.”

During the committee meeting, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) motioned to strike the EQUALS Act and replace it with legislation to first require GAO to review effects of prior probationary period extensions before making any long-term changes. Lynch’s amendment was struck down by the committee’s Republican majority.

Legislation on official time advances

Committee Republicans also advanced a bill that would require agencies to report in greater detail the use of official time by federal employees governmentwide. The Official Time Reporting Act passed out of the committee in a vote of 24-19 along party lines.

If enacted, the bill would require all agencies to submit reports on how much official time is used in each fiscal year, and justify any potential increases in official time that may occur.

During the committee meeting, Republican lawmakers argued that official time takes away from employees’ job responsibilities. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the lead co-sponsor on the bill, also criticized the lack of agencies’ reporting on official time over the last several years.

The bill “will let the American people know exactly how much of their hard-earned money is spent not providing valuable service, but on federal employee union activities,” Foxx said.

Some committee Democrats, however, described the legislation as an attack on union rights. The lawmakers emphasized that official time is used for activities that support federal employees, while raising concerns about the possibility that the bill could let the Trump administration further limit union rights.

“This year under the Trump administration, federal employees have faced job insecurity, financial strain and the loss of collective bargaining agreements. This bill will make matters worse,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said. “We all benefit when unions and their members are empowered to prevent and address retaliation, discrimination and sexual harassment.”

Generally, official time hours can go toward negotiating union contracts, meeting with management, filing grievances or representing employees dealing with management disputes. Under law, federal unions are allotted specific amounts of time and resources to conduct these activities.

Federal unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, have pushed back against the Trump administration’s characterization of official time as “taxpayer-funded union time,” calling it a misrepresentation.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Garcia argued that official time leads to lower staff turnover and higher employee morale, while also preventing potential legal costs down the road.

“Official time is work time that employees are allowed to use for making the workplace safe and protecting workers from discrimination or harassment,” he said.

Committee approves some bills with bipartisan support

In contrast, some legislation that the committee approved on Tuesday gained strong bipartisan support from lawmakers. That includes bills on training for federal supervisors, skills-based hiring of federal contractors and amending the system for relocation payments for federal employees.

The Federal Supervisor Education Act, for instance, unanimously advanced out of the Oversight committee in a vote of 43-0. If enacted, the legislation would require agencies to work with OPM to create training programs for newly hired or promoted agency managers and supervisors.

Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.), who introduced the legislation in October, argued during Tuesday’s meeting that many federal supervisors step into leadership roles without enough training, and with no clear expectations for how to adjust to a managerial role in government.

“Agencies promote strong technical employees into supervisory jobs, and then send them in blind,” Timmons said. “That leads to low productivity, uneven standards and a system where good employees feel unsupported and bad employees rarely face consequences.”

Timmons added that the legislation would result in “real, meaningful training,” rather than being “a slideshow or a checkbox exercise.”

Although he said he mostly agreed with the bill’s intentions, Walkinshaw proposed striking one provision of the legislation. The initial bill text included a requirement that supervisory training programs must include additional training on the probationary period — something that Walkinshaw argued was outside the bill’s scope.

Committee Republicans agreed to adopt Walkinshaw’s amendment, after saying that it would result in stronger bipartisan support for the bill. Ultimately, the legislation advanced unanimously, with the amendment included.

“I am a strong supporter of the goal of this legislation,” Walkinshaw said. “Almost all of the language will provide supervisors within the federal workforce the appropriate training and resources to ensure there are strong leaders within their respective agencies.”

The post Committee Republicans advance House bill to overhaul the federal probationary period first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Health and Human Services faces a months-long backlog of reasonable accommodation requests from its employees, as the department embarks on major changes to how it handles these requests.

HHS is preparing to roll out a new reasonable accommodation policy later this week. Several HHS components, however, recently set their own new policies, which more broadly cover telework and how often employees may work from home.

The new policy comes at a time when the Trump administration has called on the federal workforce to show up to the office full-time, and has rolled back options for some employees to work from home full-time or occasionally each two-week pay period.

Federal agencies are required under the Rehabilitation Act to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, as long as that accommodation does not result in an “undue hardship” for agencies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told employees in a memo last week that its Accommodation Tracking System (ATS) was shutting down, and that, effective immediately, reasonable accommodations will be “centralized at the HHS level.”

According to the memo obtained by Federal News Network, HHS will need to work through a backlog of about 3,330 of CDC’s pending reasonable accommodation requests.

It’s not clear how long it will take HHS to review each individual reasonable accommodation request, but according to the CDC memo, HHS expects it will take six to eight months to get through the backlog.

It’s not clear if other HHS components are also facing a backlog of reasonable accommodation requests.

The CDC memo states that its Office of Human Resources announced telework “should not be given as an interim accommodation,” while a reasonable accommodation request is under review.

“If the employee requests telework, the employee must still report into the office until a decision is made (or use leave),” the CDC memo states.

HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard told Federal News Network in a statement Monday that “HHS is centralizing reasonable accommodation requests in alignment with President Trump’s executive order on return to work.”

“The department remains committed to processing these requests as quickly as possible,” Hilliard said.

The CDC memo also states HHS is expected to release an updated reasonable accommodation policy later this week.

Several CDC employees told Federal News Network that the agency has recently unveiled a new telework policy, in which employees are limited to 80 hours of telework per year, and that reasonable accommodations cannot include regular/scheduled or full-time telework.

A CDC spokesperson said in a statement that “this shift aligns with President Trump’s executive order on returning federal employees to in-person work, ensuring the government is best positioned to deliver results for the American people.

In September, the CDC said it would stop approving telework requests for employees with reasonable accommodations, but temporarily reversed course on that decision, according to internal agency emails obtained by Federal News Network.

A separate email obtained by Federal News Network told HHS employees with pending reasonable accommodations that “all existing reasonable accommodation programs have been consolidated to form the HHS Reasonable Accommodation (RA) Taskforce, servicing the entire HHS workforce.”

The email, sent by an HHS reasonable accommodations coordinator, instructs employees with pending reasonable accommodation requests to complete a questionnaire within seven calendar days, and to submit medical documentation within 20 calendar days.

The email states that failure to submit the required medical documentation by this deadline will result in a “closure of your request.”

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents CDC headquarters employees in Atlanta, told members in an email on Nov. 26 that the agency is once again taking steps to end full-time telework for employees with reasonable accommodations.

AFGE Local 2883 wrote that on the first day back to work after the 43-day government shutdown ended, CDC employees were told that supervisors no longer have authority to approve temporary 90-day agreements for full-time telework, and that their temporary accommodations that expired over the shutdown could not be renewed.

“Some were told their current, non-expired RAs were cancelled outright. Still others were told telework is no longer a reasonable accommodation available to CDC staff. Scores of employees with disabilities were instructed to return to the office or take leave,” the union wrote.

AFGE Local 2883 told members that CDC’s actions stand in “direct defiance” of the return-to-office mandate that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office, as well as follow-up guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management.

“This harmful policy change keeps us from doing our jobs for the American people in the best way possible. It works against the safety and well-being of all of our colleagues, including many of whom were forced to return to a campus still marred by unrepaired bullet holes from the August shooting. And it violates our rights as federal workers. It’s against the law to mass-deny any type of reasonable accommodation for everyone in the agency,” the union wrote.

In August, a gunman fired more than 180 shots into the CDC’s headquarters, killing a police officer who responded to the scene.

According to the union, however, HHS reasonable accommodation coordinators have said “telework is still a reasonable accommodation at CDC,” and that existing temporary reasonable accommodations granted on or before Sept. 15 will continue and can be extended or modified as appropriate.

“CDC’s misrepresentation of HHS’s policy on reasonable accommodations terrorized both the supervisors who implemented it and the employees who suffered as a result,” the union wrote. “This is a confusing and stressful time for many of us, especially as there has been no clear guidance across offices for what comes next. We cannot let this chaos and uncertainty stand, and we will demand clear leadership and full transparency.”

Despite these restrictions on telework as reasonable accommodations, some parts of HHS are, more broadly, easing up on work-from-home restrictions.

At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Administrator Mehmet Oz told staff in a Nov. 14 email that CMS employees will be able to take up to four telework days per month, “in recognition of the hard work that you all have put in this year.”

According to the email, employees who scored a 4.5 or higher on their most recent performance rating will be eligible to take two days of telework per two-week pay period. Employees who scored between 4.49 and 3.0 will be eligible to day a single telework day per pay period.

The new policy went into effect on Nov. 17. Oz told employees that these telework days would not count against the 80 hours of telework that all HHS employees can take each year. CMS did not respond to a request for comment.

Oz told CMS staff that any telework in excess of that 80-hour limit would require an office-level or center-level signoff, including by the political leadership for that component.

“Those requests must include a detailed writeup justifying the exception and need to then be sent forward to be approved by the COO for CMS,” Oz wrote. “All requests beyond the 80 hours will be sent to HHS for tracking and awareness.”

According to the email, new employees won’t be eligible for telework until they are at least six months into the job.

“Once they have completed their probationary period and received their first-year performance review then their telework status can reflect that performance rating,” Oz wrote.

The post HHS faces months-long backlog of reasonable accommodation requests from employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is convening Tuesday morning to mark up a slew of bills, many of which would impact the federal workforce in one way or another.

Tuesday’s meeting will be the first legislative markup session the committee has held in nearly two months, with the last being prior to the 43-day government shutdown. Any bills that the committee approves during the markup will advance to the full House for further consideration.

Lawmakers are expected to consider bills covering everything from whistleblower protections and skills-based hiring for federal contractors, to relocation incentives for federal employees.

Several other legislative changes may be on the horizon as well. Here are three key bills up for the committee’s consideration that may bring significant changes for the federal workforce:

Probationary period, federal workforce changes

One Republican-led bill, introduced by Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) in October, aims to cement many of the changes the Trump administration has made to the government’s rules for the probationary period in the federal workforce.

If enacted, the so-called EQUALS Act would require most new federal employees to serve a two-year probationary period — a time in which employees have limited appeal rights and are easier to remove, before their employment in the federal workforce can be solidified.

Part of the bill would compel agencies to evaluate their employees regularly throughout the federal probationary period. And in the last 30 days of that two-year period, agencies would have to certify — and get the Office of Personnel Management to approve — that the probationary employee “advances the public interest,” before the employee can become tenured.

Any probationary employees who are not actively certified by their agency would be terminated, according to the GOP-led legislation.

The bill also states that when making a decision on whether to keep a probationary employee, agencies can additionally consider performance and conduct; the “needs and interests” of the agency; and whether the employee would advance “organizational goals” or “efficiency.”

The EQUALS Act aligns with efforts from the Trump administration earlier this year to overhaul the rules for the government’s probationary period. In April, President Donald Trump called for the creation of “Civil Service Rule XI,” which similarly required agencies to review and actively sign off on probationary workers’ continued employment before they can be moved out of a probationary period.

Trump’s executive order also expanded the reasons that probationary period employees can be fired. In June, OPM further clarified that probationary employees can be terminated based on broader reasons than the previous limitations set only to performance or conduct.

The House bill also comes after the Trump administration fired tens of thousands of probationary employees earlier this year, stating that the removals were due to “poor performance.” But in September, a federal judge found that OPM unlawfully directed the mass probationary firings. The judge ordered agencies to update employees’ personnel files to reflect that their firings were not due to performance or misconduct.

An eye on official time

A separate bill teed up by Republicans would compel agencies to provide much more detail on federal union representatives’ use of official time to both Congress and the public on an annual basis.

The Official Time Reporting Act from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) would require all agencies to submit reports on how much official time is used in each fiscal year, and justify any potential increases in official time that may occur.

The legislation would then require OPM and the Office of Management and Budget to create and send a joint report to Congress, and make publicly available online, the details of official time governmentwide. Those reports would have to cover how much official time each federal employee used, as well as provide data on official time hours calculated against the total number of bargaining unit employees for an “official time rate.”

Under the GOP-led legislation, those annual reports would additionally have to detail the specific purpose of all official time, the amount of money withheld for union dues, the cost of pay and benefits for all employees while they are on official time, and the office space and resources union representatives use while on official time.

Generally, official time refers to on-the-clock hours that go toward work such as negotiating union contracts, meeting with management, filing complaints or grievances against an agency, or representing employees who are dealing with disciplinary actions or other management disputes. Federal unions are allotted, by law, specific and limited amounts of agency time and resources to conduct activities on official time.

Official time by union representatives has been a major target of the Trump administration this year. Some agencies have either reduced or fully removed official time options, in response to executive orders from Trump calling for the termination of collective bargaining at the majority of executive branch agencies.

The administration’s actions have received major pushback from federal unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees, which said OPM’s characterization of official time as “taxpayer-funded union time” is false and stigmatizing.

Mandatory executive training

During Tuesday’s markup, Oversight committee lawmakers also plan to consider legislation that would require a mandatory training program all managers and supervisors across the federal workforce would have to take.

Under the Federal Supervisor Education Act, which Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) introduced in October, agencies would have to work with OPM to create training programs for agency managers, with at least some modules focused on goals like performance management, employee engagement and productivity.

The bill would also require the training programs to cover how supervisors should manage employees who have “unacceptable performance,” as well as how to make use of the probationary period. The bill also mandates that managers and supervisors receive training on how to address reports of harassment, prohibited personnel practices, employee rights, and more.

The legislation emphasizes that agencies should use “instructor-based” training as much as practicable. If enacted, supervisors would have to complete the training within one year of being appointed to a supervisory role, and would have to retake the trainings at least once every three years following that.

The Republican-led effort comes after OPM launched two federal workforce training programs for senior executives in November, incorporating common themes from the Trump administration on “accountability,” performance management and adherence to the president’s priorities.

Although both new programs are optional, OPM still told agencies to “set the expectation” that all career Senior Executive Service members should at least complete training modules on “returning to founding principles” and “implementing administration priorities” within the next year.

In the Oversight committee meeting Tuesday, all three federal workforce bills, along with many others, will be up for consideration and potential advancement in the House.

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A federal union representing over 30,000 Bureau of Prisons employees is suing the agency over its recent cancellation of the BOP’s collective bargaining agreement.

The lawsuit, filed last week by the American Federation of Government Employees’ Council of Prisons Locals 33, alleged that the agency’s decision to cancel the union contract violated First Amendment rights, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

The union argued that BOP Director William K. Marshall III’s Sept. 25 announcement ending the labor-management agreement “made clear” that the contract was not canceled due to President Donald Trump’s executive orders, or for “national security” purposes. Instead, the union alleged that it was a form of retaliation, and that the agency did not follow required procedures in its actions.

The union is asking for an injunction to reverse the collective bargaining agreement’s cancellation at BOP.

An AFGE official, speaking anonymously for fear of professional retaliation, said the intention of the new lawsuit “is to protect our members and advocate for them the way we always have.”

“Our agency was status quo for months — then just decided out of nowhere that this union is a roadblock,” the official said. “Especially in law enforcement, you need protections in place. You need a union to be able to help these staff through these situations. That, to me, is our biggest driving force. We just want to be there to protect our people.”

A spokesperson for the BOP declined Federal News Network’s request for comment, stating that the agency does not comment on pending litigation or ongoing legal proceedings. The spokesperson instead directed to Marshall’s initial September announcement for information.

In the September announcement, Marshall said the decision to cancel the contract was “to make [employees’] lives better,” while adding that AFGE had become “an obstacle to progress instead of a partner in it.”

“[The union contract] didn’t give you your protections, the law did, and Bureau policy continues them,” Marshall said in September. “This isn’t about taking things away, it’s about giving you more.”

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders, calling on most agencies to cancel their union contracts and terminate collective bargaining for broad swaths of federal employees.

Although Trump’s orders made use of a narrow legal provision that lets a president suspend collective bargaining for “national security” purposes, BOP’s announcement in September made no direct mention of national security.

The union said in its new lawsuit that there was no “reasoned explanation” for ending the BOP contract, in effect a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Additionally, the union alleged that BOP failed to consider alternatives to the contract’s cancellation, as well as the interests of union members by “suddenly pulling the plug on union protections.”

The lawsuit also argued that the contract termination violated the First Amendment, which prohibits agency officials from retaliating against either individuals or organizations based on their protected speech.

As a result of the contract’s termination, BOP employees “have become even more hesitant than they were already to engage in activity that is or could be perceived as being contrary to policies of the Trump administration,” the union wrote.

More broadly, AFGE is suing the Trump administration over the president’s pair of executive orders and several agencies’ subsequent actions ending collective bargaining. The BOP lawsuit, in comparison, is more narrowly focused on the timing and manner of BOP’s specific decision to cancel the contract covering bargaining unit employees.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley expressed support for the new and separate lawsuit at BOP.

“Their union contract has provided employees a voice at work to ensure critical protections, including safeguards against unsafe working conditions, unfair discipline and staffing shortages that put both workers and the public at risk,” Kelley said, adding that ending the contract “is a dangerous action that should alarm everyone.”

The legal action also comes as the Protect America’s Workforce Act, a bill to reverse the Trump administration’s efforts to remove union protections, heads toward a House floor vote. If enacted, the legislation would restore collective bargaining for tens of thousands of federal employees.

Many agencies have proceeded with “de-recognizing” their unions, after an appeals court in August granted a stay on a preliminary injunction that had previously been preventing agencies from implementing Trump’s anti-union orders.

But in comparison with other agencies’ contract terminations, BOP’s decision was delayed. It took nearly two months following the court decision before the agency moved forward with ending the agreement. Originally, the contract was set to expire May 28, 2029.

The contract laid out policies for employees on overtime, shift work, sick leave and safety requirements, as well as procedural protections for employees during reduction-in-force proceedings. The agreement also secured limitations on disciplinary actions, and set standards around official time, and grievance and arbitration procedures.

“The [collective bargaining agreement] was the product of years of negotiations to safeguard essential rights for bargaining unit members,” the union’s lawsuit stated.

During the two months prior to the contract’s cancellation, the union said the agency appeared to be upholding the contract’s policies, for example by holding labor-management relations meetings, and maintaining space for union officials on-site — but then moved to terminate the contract “effective immediately,” with little notice to union officials.

In his September announcement, Marshall stated that canceling the contract would not have any impact on job security, pay, benefits or safety for correctional officers.

But union officials said there were issues “almost immediately” after the collective bargaining agreement was ended. For instance, the union is now no longer able to represent employees when there are workplace issues, such as an instance of alleged harassment on the job. Prior to the contract’s cancellation, union officials would speak with BOP leaders and work to conduct an assessment or investigation into any issues that arose.

“The union typically walks you through the process, helps you respond, helps you through the investigation,” a union official said. “But we’re not there — and these staff don’t know what they can and can’t do, because we’ve always been there.”

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A bipartisan bill that would end the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights for most federal employees is guaranteed to get a full House vote, now that a majority of lawmakers support it.

As of Monday, 218 House lawmakers signed onto a discharge petition, forcing the House to vote on the Protect America’s Workforce Act.

The bill, led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) would restore collective bargaining rights for tens of thousands of federal employees, if approved by Congress.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March that barred unions from bargaining on behalf of federal employees at many agencies, on the grounds that those agencies work primarily in national security. In August, he signed another executive order that expanded the list of agencies barred from negotiations with federal employee unions.

Lawmakers estimate the executive order impacts about 67% of the federal workforce. The Trump administration’s policy has barred unions from representing employees at the departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Energy.

A group of six unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees sued the Trump administration over its rollback of collective bargaining rights, arguing that the administration has taken an overly broad view of agencies that work primarily in national security.

A federal judge blocked the administration from enforcing the executive order in April, but an appeals court stayed that decision this summer and allowed agencies to keep canceling collective bargaining agreements that cover broad swaths of the federal workforce. Since the appeals court’s ruling, several agencies have rescinded their collective bargaining rights with unions.

Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Nick Lalota (R-N.Y.) contributed the last two signatures for the discharge petition on Monday. Lawler said in a statement that “restoring collective bargaining rights strengthens our federal workforce and helps deliver more effective, accountable service to the American people.”

“Every American deserves the right to have a voice in the workplace, including those who serve their country every single day. Supporting workers and ensuring good government are not opposing ideas. They go hand in hand,” Lawler said.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, applauded Republican lawmakers for supporting the bill, and called on the House to quickly vote on it.

“Collective bargaining gives employees a fundamental voice in making the government work better for the American people, and we thank Congressman Lawler for recognizing that America functions best when labor and management cooperate toward common goals,” Kelley said.

AFGE’s National VA Council recently filed a lawsuit challenging the VA’s selective enforcement of the administration’s executive order. The complaint states that VA Secretary Doug Collins scrapped collective bargaining agreements with unions opposed to the Trump administration’s federal workforce polices, but spared labor contracts for unions that represent VA police, security guards and firefighters.

Meanwhile, another bipartisan group of lawmakers is also leading a bill that would restore collective bargaining rights for VA employees. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) are leading that bill.

The National Treasury Employees Union, as well as the National Weather Service Employees Organization and the Patent Office Professional Association, are also suing the Trump administration over its collective bargaining rollback.  Federal courts in D.C. will hold proceedings in both cases next month.

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The Senate’s initial agreement toward ending the longest-ever government shutdown includes provisions that would secure back pay for all federal employees, as well as reverse the Trump administration’s recent reductions in force.

Though much is still up in the air and subject to possible changes, the early steps in the process indicate that, if the Senate bill’s current language is maintained, both excepted and furloughed federal employees would receive back pay dating to Oct. 1, the day the shutdown began.

Federal employees, regardless of whether they are furloughed or excepted, have always received back pay following every past shutdown, due to one-time actions from Congress. It wasn’t until 2019 that Congress passed — and President Donald Trump signed — a law meant to ensure federal employees are compensated retroactively for all shutdowns going forward.

Questions over back pay arose once again, however, after the Office of Management and Budget released a draft legal opinion in October, suggesting that furloughed employees are not automatically ensured back pay after all.

Many lawmakers, attorneys and unions harshly criticized the White House’s opinion, calling it a clear misinterpretation of the 2019 Government Employees Fair Treatment Act.

Throughout the funding lapse, the Trump administration has shuffled funding to compensate select groups of the federal workforce, as well as military members, while hundreds of thousands of others have missed two paychecks since the shutdown began.

The Senate took the first step toward ending the shutdown on Sunday, clearing a procedural hurdle that required 60 votes to move the spending legislation forward in the appropriations process. All but eight Democrats voted against the spending measure. But an actual end to the shutdown may still be at least several days away.

The current agreement includes bipartisan bills worked out by the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund parts of government, including food aid, veterans’ programs and the legislative branch. A continuing resolution would fund most other agency appropriations until the end of January, giving lawmakers more than two months to finish the additional spending bills.

The Senate’s legislation over the weekend would also compel agencies to reverse all reduction-in-force actions that have taken place since the shutdown began. About 4,200 federal employees across government received RIF notices in mid-October, following guidance from the White House that encouraged agencies to move forward with layoffs in the event of a funding lapse.

Most, but not all, of those RIF actions are currently on hold due to a preliminary injunction granted by a district court judge last month. Federal unions are suing the Trump administration over the layoffs, alleging that they violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Senate’s tentative agreement would also temporarily bar the Trump administration from conducting further RIFs until late January.

Federal employee organizations and unions expressed strong support for the provisions to secure back pay for federal employees and protect against RIFs.

“These protections provide for fundamental fairness,” Marcus Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association, said Monday. “They also safeguard continuity of government operations, preserve critical talent, and stabilize and extend funding for missions and services that millions of Americans rely on daily.”

“Millions of federal employees have missed paychecks, forcing them to assume significant financial cost, risk and uncertainty,” William Shackelford, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), said. “Government shutdowns — partial as they are — harm dedicated public servants and the missions and people they serve.”

The American Federation of Government Employees threw in additional support for the passage of the Shutdown Fairness Act, a Republican-led bill to pay federal employees immediately during the current government shutdown, as well as any future ones.

“While we are glad that the shutdown is coming to an end for now, we remain concerned about the growing use of government shutdowns as leverage for political gain,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said. “That’s why AFGE strongly supports the bipartisan Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay federal workers during government shutdowns, ensuring that federal employees will never be used as political pawns again.”

The Shutdown Fairness Act failed to advance in the Senate on Friday. Democrats largely voted down the legislation on the grounds that it did not include guardrails to prevent the Trump administration from paying some federal employees and not others.

After the bill initially failed to move forward two weeks ago, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) expanded his legislation to include furloughed employees and federal contractors. The bill initially only provided immediate pay for excepted employees who continue to work during a shutdown.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Despite the Trump administration scrapping this year’s signature survey for assessing trends in the federal workforce, a new opportunity has emerged for federal employees to make their voices heard.

The Partnership for Public Service is launching its own version of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which it is calling the Public Service Viewpoint Survey. The assessment seeks to fill what would otherwise be a gap in federal workforce data, after the Office of Personnel Management’s decision to cancel FEVS for 2025.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said creating an alternative survey for federal employees to take this year is “not the first choice, but the necessary choice.”

“The best choice would be for the government to continue to do what the law requires and what it has done for many years in a row,” Stier said in an interview with Federal News Network.

Surveying federal employees and collecting data is especially crucial for 2025, Stier said, due to the major changes the Trump administration has made to the federal workforce.

“If the data were important in prior years, it’s even more vital today when so much disruption and turmoil is occurring,” Stier said, adding that without the data, “it’s not just flying blind — it’s flying blind in a hurricane.”

An OPM spokesperson declined to comment.

It’s the first time that the Partnership for Public Service, which advocates for non-partisan improvements to the federal government, has taken on this type of project. Though the non-profit hopes its survey will reach federal employees broadly across agencies, there will be some limitations in the survey’s distribution since it is external rather than government-run.

“We are not going to in any way, shape or form completely replicate or replace what the federal government has way more resources and access to be able to do,” Stier said.

When conducting FEVS each year, OPM can reach federal employees across all agencies in the executive branch more directly. That makes it easier to administer a governmentwide survey — and by extension, receive a stronger level of response from employees across virtually all agencies and subcomponents.

Without that same level of reach, the Partnership is instead working with various federal unions and employee organizations, who will promote the survey to their members on the Partnership’s behalf. Michelle Amante, the Partnership’s senior vice president of government programs, said the organization is trying to be intentional in its partnerships to get as wide a reach as possible, and to try to avoid gaps in the data.

“We’ll be looking at responses as they come in,” Amante told Federal News Network. “We’ll continue to work with our partners to try to get the word out where we see any big voids.”

Earlier in the year, OPM initially delayed the FEVS timeline due to what it said were more “urgent” changes for the federal workforce from the Trump administration. The subsequent decision in August to fully cancel the survey, first reported by Federal News Network, marks the first time that OPM will not run the FEVS since the annual survey began over 20 years ago.

OPM said agencies could still choose to survey their employees on their own this year, but any plans to do so would have to be run by OPM first. So far, most agencies do not appear to be moving forward with survey plans, raising questions about a legal obligation to survey federal employees.

In 2004, Congress began requiring all executive branch agencies to begin surveying their employees annually. Federal regulations mandate that agencies ask 16 specific questions to their employees, once per year, on agency leadership, employee satisfaction, the federal workplace, opportunities for professional development, contributions to agency mission and recognition of employees.

OPM is not required by statute to administer a governmentwide survey, but back in 2004, the agency opted to move forward with creating FEVS. Over time, agencies began to rely more heavily on FEVS, with relatively few conducting their own employee surveys and the vast majority simply using FEVS to fulfill the legal obligations. Despite the requirements, there are no clear repercussions for agencies that don’t conduct a survey.

“It’s really important to have those years of data to evaluate trends,” said Rob Shriver, managing director of the Civil Service Strong program at Democracy Forward, and former acting director of OPM. “I just can’t imagine, as somebody who’s led a federal agency, not having that information from my workforce.”

The Partnership’s survey will pull many of its questions from past years of FEVS. There will be several added questions, including some on artificial intelligence, as well as comparing year-to-year employee performance and service delivery.

But overall, the survey’s length will be considerably shorter than FEVS. While OPM’s 2024 survey had 90 core questions, the Partnership’s “Public Service Viewpoint Survey” will have just 23. The choice to run a shorter survey was intentional.

“In the past, the survey was just too long,” Amante said. “It’s been a barrier for many federal employees.”

The Partnership is also putting several precautions in place to protect federal employees’ identities and keep their responses anonymous. Federal employees will only receive an invitation to take the survey through their personal emails, rather than their government emails. The Partnership will also not send the survey directly to employees — instead, it’s collaborating with unions and employee organizations to distribute the survey to their members.

“We are doing everything we can to make it safe for federal employees to participate — we understand this is a difficult environment,” Stier said. “We have lots of safety protocols to make sure that federal employees can aggregate their voice, so that leaders can make better choices and the public can have a better understanding about what’s happening in our government.”

The American Federation of Government employees is one of several unions collaborating with the Partnership on the effort.

“We hope this can fill in a real gap and give folks information they need to make good decisions that will be beneficial to federal employees,” Andrew Huddleston, AFGE’s advocacy department director, said in an interview. “We’ve been keeping track of this data for many years. Interruptions to that dataset are deleterious to understanding how different workplace policies, different government policies, impact the federal workforce.”

In addition to filling a data void, the Partnership also plans to use the results of its survey to help determine the next round of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings. The annual series is one of the Partnership’s most popular programs, and one of the first initiatives the non-profit launched after it was founded in 2001.

The survey opens on Monday and will be out in the field until Dec. 19 at midnight. The topline results are expected to be released in early 2026. Once the results are in, the Partnership plans to share its findings and analysis with OPM, as well as leaders and managers across all agencies.

“It’s an opportunity for us to hear their voice — and to use that data and hopefully make data-driven public policy decisions,” Amante said. “We are very hopeful that federal agencies will partner with us when we have the data, and that we can help inform better decisions when it comes to managing the federal workforce.”

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Senate Democrats have again blocked a Republican-led effort to immediately pay federal employees under the government shutdown, arguing that the GOP bill in its current form does not include enough guardrails on the Trump administration.

All but three Democrats voted down the advancement of the Shutdown Fairness Act, resulting in a vote of 53-43 on the Senate floor Friday evening. The motion failed to reach the 60 votes required to limit debate and move the legislation more quickly to a final vote.

After the bill failed to move forward two weeks ago, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the bill’s lead cosponsor, expanded the legislation to include furloughed employees and federal contractors. The bill initially only provided immediate pay for excepted employees who are continuing to work during the funding lapse.

The Shutdown Fairness Act would apply for the current shutdown, and payments would be backdated to Oct. 1, when the shutdown began.

Ahead of the vote on the bill, Johnson pushed back against Democrats’ arguments and denied that it would give too much leeway to the Trump administration.

“I know some people want to reduce authority, but that’s a bill that won’t be signed,” Johnson said. “If you want to pay the federal workers, if you want to stop punishing them for our dysfunction, if you want to stop using them as pawns in this political game, that’s a demand you have to drop.”

Earlier on Friday, Johnson attempted to move forward the Shutdown Fairness Act with a motion for unanimous consent. But Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) blocked the motion, arguing that Johnson’s bill would not prevent the Trump administration from limiting the pay to only select groups of the federal workforce, or from using the bill’s funds for purposes outside of paying employees.

“I just deeply, deeply appreciate that Senator Johnson has updated his proposal to pay all federal employees during the shutdown to include furloughed workers,” Peters said. “But unfortunately, I just still have some concerns about the way that the bill has been drafted so far … There’s too much wiggle room for the administration to basically pick and choose which federal employees are paid and when.”

“Every employee is now included. There’s no discretion whatsoever in terms of who’s furloughed, who gets brought back to work, who gets paid,” Johnson responded. “There’s no picking and choosing. That is completely false.”

Most civilian federal employees have missed their second paycheck as of Friday. Hundreds of thousands of employees have been working without pay for the duration of the shutdown, while hundreds of thousands of others have been furloughed for weeks.

Throughout the shutdown, the Trump administration has shuffled funding to compensate select groups of the federal workforce, as well as military members, while hundreds of thousands of others continue to go without pay.

Peters pushed for the passage of a counterproposal, called the Military and Federal Employee Protection Act. Peters’ bill is similar to Johnson’s, but it additionally clarifies that the Trump administration cannot use the bill’s funds for purposes other than paying employees.

After the unanimous consent motion was struck down, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) then called for a vote to invoke cloture on the Shutdown Fairness Act, which later failed Friday evening.

“I don’t know how anybody in their right mind can walk into this chamber, look these people in the eye, and say, ‘We’re not going to pay you,’” Thune said.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, endorsed Johnson’s legislation, calling it “long overdue.” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said Friday that the amended version was a “significant improvement,” since it now covers furloughed employees and contractors as well. The union urged Congress to pass the bill.

“Every missed paycheck deepens the financial hole in which federal workers and their families find themselves,” Kelley said. “By the time Congress reaches a compromise, the damage will have been done — to their bank accounts, their credit ratings, their health and their dignity.”

Last week, AFGE also called on Congress to pass a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government. The union said the shutdown has gone on far too long — and that any political arguments should only continue once the funding lapse is ended and all federal employees are paid.

All excepted and furloughed federal employees are guaranteed retroactive pay once a shutdown ends, due to a 2019 law. But the White House has recently called that guarantee into question, arguing that the law does not automatically ensure back pay for furloughed employees.

Many lawmakers, attorneys and unions have pushed back against what they described as a clear misinterpretation of the law from the White House.

There appeared to be some bipartisan progress earlier this week toward putting an end to the government shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday made a new offer to reopen the government, although Bloomberg reported that Republicans saw the proposal as a “nonstarter.”

The Senate is expected to stay in session over the weekend for the first time since the shutdown began. The House has remained out of session since September.

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