By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration expects hundreds of health department officials will lose civil service job protections, making them easier to fire, as it carries out a plan to revamp the federal workforce, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.
Supervisors at several agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services received the memo, which said positions on their teams may be reclassified in an initial wave and that additional waves would follow.
The change means people in those roles could be fired at will. Current civil service protections guarantee employees can only be fired for cause and have appeal rights.
The move is in line with an overhaul announced by the administration in February that gives the president more power to hire and fire up to 50,000 career federal employees, who would be reclassified to Schedule Policy/Career, formerly known as Schedule F during Trump’s first term.
HHS confirmed the authenticity of the memo but did not respond to questions about how many staff would be affected, or in which agencies and positions. The category of employees involved, GS-15, usually consists of senior technical experts, managers, high-level policy staff and supervisors.
“Supervisors at HHS were merely notified on Friday that reclassification could happen,” an HHS spokesperson said on Saturday. “Any change in classification could only happen if the president signs an executive order on Schedule P/C.”
Trump had pledged in his election campaign to strip job protections from federal workers deemed by his team to be “influencing” government policy. Governance experts say the change will make it easier to carry out more mass layoffs.
“At HHS, this initial tranche of conversions is expected to apply to a relatively modest number of GS-15 positions – on the order of hundreds, not thousands – with additional tranches to follow as implementation progresses,” the memo said.
Unions representing federal workers have challenged the move in federal court.
The Trump administration has sought to shrink the federal workforce and make civil servants and historically independent boards and commissions more accountable to the White House.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by David Gregorio, Cynthia Osterman and Edmund Klamann)
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