Trump Administration Brings Changes to the Federal Hiring System – A Brief Look at President Trump’s Schedule F (Policy/Career) Policy and Civil Service Reform
Recent timeline
In October 2020, President Trump published a “Schedule F” executive order that garnered a lot of attention. However, it was never implemented before President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 and signed an executive order to stop it. The policy aimed to redefine a range of federal jobs with “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions” as roles to be filled by the president rather than through the traditional “competitive” civil service hiring process. One estimate was that between 2-4 percent would likely be affected although the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would ultimately make its own determinations on which roles would be reassigned to the new classification.
As summarized by President Trump in his executive order, the purpose of Schedule F was to better ensure that employees in significant policy-influencing positions were responsive to the policies and priorities of the president. After all, federal employees in the executive branch must be accountable to the head executive. Employees who are ineffective, and at times even hostile to shifting priorities of an administration, are particularly troubling when they are in decision making positions that steer agencies towards policy objectives.
In April 2024, President Biden’s administration published a final rule through OPM to put up stronger roadblocks to implementing Schedule F or anything like it in the future. However, in January 2025, President Trump published a new executive order to implement an updated version of Schedule F, now referred to as “Schedule Policy/Career.” A new rule may be the next step in implementing or solidifying these changes.
So are previous Schedule F changes, now known as “Schedule Policy/Career,” good policy?
Yes. The way in which such policy is implemented is important to consider, but from Americans for Prosperity’s priorities in government and civil service reform, the Trump Administration’s efforts to reclassify a range of agency positions into roles that are filled directly by a presidential administration provide positive reform potential for the civil service system.
More on AFP’s Vision executive employment vision
The federal executive branch must be limited to its proper scope as set in the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes, accountable to American voters through the President and members of Congress they elect. This means Congress must reign in rising federal budgets for agencies, set appropriate agency missions through legislation, and hold agencies accountable in successfully carrying out their missions via regular oversight.
However, not all executive branch decisions should run directly through Congress. Presidents must also be able to make workforce and policy decisions that allow them to effectively run the executive branch on behalf of the American people with their own vision.
Currently, the civil service employment system – strongly steered by government union bargaining, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and general schedule (GS) pay scales – is particularly defined by difficult hiring, discipline, and termination procedures. The result is a bureaucracy that is insufficiently responsive to either the president or Congress. This has contributed to the rise of the “administrative state” where agencies exert too much power and influence on one hand yet are crippled by inefficiency on another.
When functioning properly, the executive branch will be constrained by courts and Congress – not civil service red tape and a federal workforce that can defy the president by carrying out separate agendas.
As part of a broader vision, agency employment reforms include:
Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) – MSPB holds significant control over the employment of federal employees, dictating how employees are disciplined, the path to termination, and in making final decisions on whether an employee will be terminated or not. MSPB’s authority must be altered to limit delayed accountability measures and terminations from occurring across the federal government. Good reforms will also help
- The Merit Act is a strong example of restoring speed and accountability to employee termination and accountability processes. This legislation and related efforts would remove the extensive review processes, extended mediation, and costly reinstatement powers executed by MSPB and agencies. Such accountability will reduce the costs and increase the effectiveness and responsiveness of federal agencies.
Institute “Schedule Policy/Career” and/or other personnel reforms within the executive branch that can expand which administration positions can be responsively filled by presidential administrations. As noted above, presidents need to be able to make personnel decisions to carry out their agenda. Courts and Congress can constrain concerning actions and hold agencies accountable for performance, but Schedule Policy/Career and other reforms that produce more dynamic workforce accountability allow presidential administrations to operate as intended.
Union policy:
Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) – FLRA provides collective bargaining and unionization for federal employees as well as “official time,” which allows federal employees to be paid to do special interest union work as a part of their federal job. Mandatory collective bargaining and special union privileges should be ended.
Workers have a First Amendment right to freely associate with unions and other interest groups, and unions have a First Amendment right to advocate for desired policies by meeting with leaders and advocating for goals publicly. However, freedom of association does not require the federal government to sign restrictive contracts with third party union leaders over its own workforce policies. In fact, collective bargaining contracts undermine executive authority and congressional oversight by providing interest groups outsized power and use of taxpayer money to advocate for policies that undermine the proper functioning of government and misuse precious American taxpayer resources.
- The Federal Workforce Freedom Act would preserve freedom of association for employees to join interest groups like unions but ban government union collective bargaining, ensuring federal employees are accountable to the president, agency leaders, and Congress
- The No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act would end official time practices at the federal level, restoring agency resources to fulfilling their missions faithfully on behalf of American voters.
- See Title 5 Chapter XCVII Part 9701 Subpart E Labor-Management Relations for more on federal collective bargaining as well as an Introduction to the FLRA.
Reduce federal/taxpayer resources:
- As presidents rightly seek to execute their agendas and make personnel decisions in their agencies, Congress must help manage the executive branch broadly by reducing agency costs and agency scope to what it should be. By focusing on broader functions, Congress can avoid micromanaging agency personnel decisions such as the size of the workforce or mandating office work policy. In fact, reducing the federal footprint of properties overall, and particularly in Washington, DC, could be enhanced by well-governed remote work and the opening of facilities outside of the DC region for instance. The key for Congress is to focus on proper size and scope of agencies combined with more efficient hiring and termination policies for presidential administrations to allow for effective management of the federal workforce.