Personnel policies are changing so fast even seasoned feds are struggling to follow

Guest:	John Hatton
Title:	Staff Vice President for Policy and Programs at NARFE
Summary:	Several weeks into the DHS shutdown, front‑line employees from TSA to the Coast Guard are working without pay as airport delays mount and families feel the strain. At the same time, the administration is accelerating major personnel changes, from Schedule Policy/Career conversions to new RIF rules that could redefine job security for tens of thousands of federal workers.

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton There is so much going on in the federal workforce space. We’re gonna see if we can tie several threads together in our conversation today. So let’s start first with the shutdown. We’re several weeks into the DHS shutdown and there’s talk about funding some of the sub-agencies separately, but no movement really. What are you hearing about how the shutdown is affecting federal employees on the ground?

John Hatton Well, they’re about to miss their first full paycheck. And so that’s obviously gonna have real world consequences. And some of the people that are impacted the most are people like TSA agents who are really on the lower level of the salary range for federal employees. And so they can’t at least afford a missed paycheck. And so it’s really a reminder of the disruption that these types of things cause. And unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to this current shutdown. And yes, there’s certainly people pushing for, including us, to fund the Coast Guard, fund TSA, fund FEMA, the things that are not controversial, and continue to negotiate over the other issues or pay people while they continue to work. So as this drags on, we’ll see if some of those kind of partial solutions get considered to a greater extent. But right now we’re just looking at the same impasse that we had over the last couple of weeks.

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Terry Gerton There’s growing concern that the DHS funding gap may actually create real security vulnerabilities during our ongoing operations with Iran. How does NARFE view the risk that repeated shutdowns pose to the broader stability and safety of the federal workforce itself?

John Hatton It’s continually disruptive of federal government operations. And so that’s going to obviously raise the risk that Is don’t get dotted, Ts don’t get crossed, that you do not prepare for the eventuality of future threats. And so a lot of what gets held up during these shutdowns in terms of actual work is the preparation for the future, the future contracts, the future planning. And every time you have that all halted and stop, that’s gonna make it more difficult to adjust to changing circumstances. And that piles on top of retention challenges that are gonna exist when you continually stop paying employees on time for their work.

Terry Gerton With that kind of uncertainty, shutdown-related, funding-related there’s also concerns about a number of policy changes. You’ve raised concerns about Schedule Policy/Career, which is final now, OPM’s proposed changes around suitability and RIF appeals. When you think about all of that together, how does that perhaps alter the balance in a merit-based career civil service.

John Hatton It drastically undermines the civil service protections that would allow for a merit-based civil service. So eliminating the ability to appeal to an independent body, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and shifting your right to appeal to either a general counsel on the agency level as the case is with Schedule Policy/Career, or to OPM as the cases with these proposals for suitability actions or reductions in force. You’re handing it away from an independent body for appeal and to a politically appointed or politically controlled entity or individual. And so, you know, there’s still a process there for appeals, but it could easily become a sham process, a rubber stamp process by which political higher ups are directing activities to fire people and then directing activities to then approve the firings as well. And so will it necessarily play out that way? We don’t know yet, but it certainly raises the prospect that it is, that it will play out that way. And certainly, even if it doesn’t immediately play out like that, it raises the threat that it could. And that this entire process becomes a sham and it’s just abused to fire people for whatever reason you want, rather than based on merit.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with John Hatton. He’s staff vice president at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. John, we’re now at the point where the Schedule Policy/Career conversions could begin anytime. But there’s also lawsuits that are escalating to stop the process. So what happens if the administration moves ahead in this space of uncertainty with these reclassifications?

John Hatton Difficult to say, full disclosure, we are plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, so we’re a challenging Schedule Policy/Career. So I don’t want to talk too much about the details of that, but I think, you know, there is the question of the legitimacy of the reclassification of people being asked to sign acknowledgments of these and being told that those, you know, are not going to result in any disciplinary action but in this environment and without any real appeals to an independent body, you maybe feel pressure to sign that acknowledgement. The court cases could delay or push back on the reclassifications or terminations that are pursuant to the reclassifications. Facts still need to play out with regard to what the administration is going to do in terms of the scope and specificity of those reclassification and whether they’re that turn around and start terminating people for whatever reason they want, and our concern is that these are politically, you know. Potentially politically based terminations, whether that’s through Schedule Policy/Career, whether that’s their suitability actions, or through reductions in force.

Terry Gerton So all of those pieces kind of come together and there’s a new policy proposal that’s out from OPM proposing new RIF rules that make performance the primary factor over tenure, which has long been the process of rating and ranking folks in a downsizing. So how did those policy changes intersect with the reality of already deep staff reductions and what might come next?

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John Hatton Our concern with some of the RIF proposals is more on the appeal to OPM versus appeals to MSPB. So if you’re not going through the proper procedures, and this is a politically motivated kind of process, potentially in line with what the president’s priorities are rather than what congressional priorities are, and then you’re also using that to selectively terminate people based on political affiliation or whatever reason, that you don’t have, again, an appeal to an independent body. So, I think what we saw was very rushed through a reduction in force actions last year. You know, whether those could continue then again, is this the administration’s response to not liking the need to go through some type of process and check on their authority? We’ll see. So, there’s a lot of facts to play out in terms of what the administration intends to do once these rules are changed and finalized. And that we’re just going to be tracking that and trying to respond. And trying to speak up for that merit-based civil service and limitation on political influence over decisions that ought to be objective based on the law and based on objective criteria.

Terry Gerton When you think about RIFs, tenure is a pretty transparent measurement. Folks know what that is and can see it. Is there an argument to be made for using performance as a determinant in the RIF process?

John Hatton Yeah, I think there’s potential downside is that it is abuse and people are, you know, you say it’s ‘based on performance,’ but it’s based on politics. The upside is you keep people who are higher performers within the organization, rather than just long tenure individuals within the organization. So, you know, there are some reasons this administration or any administration might want to use performance rather than tenure for the RIF process, but there’s also the concern that that could be abused in how it is administered.

Terry Gerton Back to my theory at the top that we could tie these threads together. When people are considering all of these kinds of policy changes and the waves are rushing back and forth over them, some people may be survivors and they may be able to hold on and wait this out, but some people might throw up their hands and say, I’m out. What are you hearing from the retirement space about how that is going for folks who may be considering that option.

John Hatton Unfortunately, not very well on a few different counts. So as people have separated from service, there’s been very long delays for some individuals getting their claims to OPM. So, we had people that were separated in July and hadn’t gotten OPM by February. We’ve started to hear some good news on those counts from some of the people that are our members, but something that should have been a 30 to 45-day period was over six months. Once it gets to OPM, interim payments appear to be going out in a somewhat timely manner. They are overwhelmed in terms of the number of claims coming in. And so the processing of those is, I think, very likely to be delayed past what is already somewhat of a long process for two months. But in some cases, if you’ve worked for different agencies can take a lot. Where we’re hearing a lot of real concerns is actual service for retirees. So, one, people cannot get through on the phones at all to OPM. We have been able to suggest to members call at 7:40 in the morning and keep on calling for 30 minutes and you might get through. We’ve always had some concerns with call center at OPM and people getting service. This is the worst it’s ever been in my memory. So that’s a major concern. That may be due to the number of people calling in because of the retirement claims that they’re not getting processed. But there’s other issues that we’ve had as well. People who are changing their health insurance over the course of open season had delayed changes. So they were left without insurance cards from their insurer because OPM did not process those in timely manner. We believe those have all been taken care of by now, but people went through at least maybe the entire month of January without getting the health insurance changed, meaning they go to the doctor, they don’t have a card and they’re on the hook for out-of-pocket payments until they get that verified. 1099-Rs is another thing. So OPMs decided to switch from mail delivery to digital. Sounds good in theory, but when … the only way for you to be able to change back to mail is to get into your account and people have trouble getting into their account because the system is difficult to use and there’s two factor authentication through login.gov. You have people going without the tax documents they need to file their taxes. So. I think that’s compounded on the amount of people calling into OPM. So you have a 1099-R issue, you have a health insurance issue, and you have retirement claims issues that are just gonna flood complaints into OPM. So we’re hearing a lot of trouble on the retiree side and with the functioning of what OPM is doing and how they’re servicing their retiree members or constituents.

Terry Gerton Any hope on the horizon for better operations?

John Hatton I would say there had been some productive moves towards a more digitized retirement process. So they did an online retirement application last year. I think that’s led to a marginal improvement in the process on the front end and being able to track what’s coming in. They appear to be processing a certain amount of claims via digital lane processing, and that appears to be going quicker than the paper-based processing. But, I don’t know how that really applies to health enrollment changes, how that applies, the 1099-R services, and how that applies to the call center. So until they get the total amount of need for services down that they can meet that need, I don’t see when that’s about to improve. Unfortunately, we had a Department of Government Efficiency that wanted to make this work better, created a deferred resignation program for people, and left OPM with less staff at a time that they were also then being flooded with a lot more work due to the deferred resignation program and all these rifts and other cuts government-wide. So, [it] wasn’t really well thought out or well planned out in terms of having the staffing needed to cover the workload here and I think when you do things hastily and with not understanding the outcome of your actions This is what may happen

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