A federal judge in California on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to temporarily resign directives that received Mass FIRS OF PROBATIONARY staff on dozens of federal agencies, a major blow to Trump administration’s efforts to drastically reduce government size.
“Congress has given the authority to hire and shoot to the agencies themselves. For example, the Department of Defense has statutory authority to hire and fire, ”said US district judge William Alsup reportedly from the bench on Thursday afternoon in San Francisco. “The Office of Personnel Management has no authority at all according to any statute in the history of the universe to hire and shoot employees at another agency. They can hire and shoot their own employees. ”
The decision came in response to a complaint that was filed last week after thousands of government workers were terminated in the early careers, part of the administration’s push with the Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to drastically shrink government expenses and staff numbers.
Since February 13, “Tens of thousands of probationary staff across dozens of federal agencies have already been terminated in the summary, assembly line mode directed by OM,” according to the case filed on behalf of the American Federation of Government employees and other working groups.
The unions claimed that the Office of Personnel Administration lacked the statutory authority to impose terminations, ignored federal employment legislation in drafting them, went against the agency’s wishes in some cases and used a template email from the HR agency to “false informing employees that their terminations are of performance rather than a part of a government. Headcount “, even for higher practices with employees.
The Trump administration had claimed that the HR agency did not conduct the layoffs and that each agency reached its own decisions.
“Agencies were responsible for deciding which test staff to keep and end,” the agency’s acting director, Charles Ezell, wrote in court documents.
The independent Has contacted the Agency and the White House for comment.
The trial claimed that the government staff themselves described the HR agency’s communication as mandates, referring to examples as a town hall at the Internal Revenue Service, where Chief Human Capital Officer Traci Demartini told the employees that the firing of the probation was “corrected from OPS, and which” even the letters received by your colleagues yesterday, Treasury, and which was given to the United States. “
Judge Alsup seemed unmatched by Trump administration’s arguments.
“How could so much of the workforce amputated – it’s so irregular and so widespread and so deviating in our country’s history?” he said in court. “How could it all happen (with) every agency that decides itself?”
Ezell will be ordered to testify during a coming March 13 consultation, the court said.
The agency at the center of the trial was also responsible for sending a lot of -e -mail to federal workers who demanded that they submit five things they performed that week or facial end or resignation, an effort that several agencies, including the HR office, later told employees to treat as volunteer.
The office also coordinated the administration’s offer to offer about two million federal employees the opportunity to accept a buyout if they resign later in the year.