- The staff management office has quietly revised a memo on the dismissal of probationary employees.
- The update specifies that the OPM cannot pump workers in other agencies and follows a recent court decision.
- It is not known if it has an impact on the thousands of probation employees who have already been dismissed.
The personnel management office discreetly revised a service note on Tuesday on the dismissal of unmarried federal employees. The memo includes two new sentences indicating that individual agencies, not the OPM, are responsible for the dismissal of workers.
Less than a week ago, a federal judge ruled that the OPM did not have the power to dismiss employees in other agencies and had exceeded its legal authority. US District Judge William Alsup said in his decision that the OPM should inform agencies that it did not have such power. The note updates appear in accordance with this directive.
The service note was published for the first time on January 20, the first day of President Donald Trump’s power, and a large part of it remains unchanged, according to the comparison of BI of original and revised versions.
Originally, the document ordered the agencies to send a list of all the probationary employees both to an OPM general email and to Amanda Scales, the Chief of Staff of the OPM which is associated with the Doge of the White House. The new version only indicates to send the list to the general email.
The original version has described probationary periods as tools to “assess employee performance and manage personnel levels”, suggesting that they could be used for labor reductions. The revised memo abandons the language management language, describing rather the probationary periods than a means of ensuring that employees “will be an asset for the government”.
The OPM sent to the main officers the officers of the human capital of agencies an e-mail on the new note, affirming that it is “aware of the recent dispute contesting the dismissals of various probation employees in various departments of the federal government”, according to a copy examined by Bi.
“The revised memorandum clarifies and confirms that the OPM has not managed and does not direct, your agency to take specific actions based on performance against probationary employees,” said the e-mail. It is signed by the “Chco Council”.
Thousands of probation employees – generally people with less than two years of experience in their role – have already been dismissed. It is not clear if they will be rehired as part of the new guidelines.
Representatives of the White House and OPM did not respond to the request for BI comments.
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