WASHINGTON, D.C. (Government Executive) — Federal agencies across government are gathering and submitting lists of recent hires and, in some cases, asking those employees to explain their backgrounds and justify their roles.
The culling of names follows a directive from the Trump administration, through the Office of Personnel Management, issued on its first day, requesting lists of all employees on their probationary periods. Depending on their hiring mechanisms, new federal employees are on probationary periods for one or two years, and in that period can typically be fired quickly and without recourse.
Employees at agencies across government confirmed to Nextgov/FCW and Government Executive that they were being asked for names to add to the lists and those records were being passed up the chain of command. While firing most federal employees can be a time consuming process due to the civil service protections they enjoy, removing probationary period workers is relatively quick and straightforward. The gathering of names has sparked fears within agencies and to outside observers that the Trump administration is planning to remove many of those workers en masse.
OPM declined to comment for this story.
Employees in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service are being asked to join “brief touch-base session[s],” as an email from the new TTS director and former longtime Tesla employee, Thomas Shedd, obtained by Nextgov/FCW and Government Executive, reads.
Employees still on their probationary period have received invites to these meetings first, per people familiar with the matter, and there’s confusion, anxiety and uncertainty about whether the meetings are essentially job interviews. Shedd asked employees to “share a recent technical win” in their meetings.
Those doing the interviews are not always identifying who they are in said meetings, sources said. The “advisors” doing the calls are in the process of onboarding at GSA and being badged into the GSA building by Shedd himself, according to internal communications viewed by Nextgov/FCW and Government Executive.
It is typical for new appointees to have meetings to understand government programs and operations and develop priorities. But one-on-one meetings between political appointees and frontline, career staff to discuss job duties and performance without career leadership and supervisors are abnormal, said a former government employee who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
It is “unprecedented,” said one current employee at TTS.
One employee who started at the Internal Revenue Service within the last year told Government Executive and Nextgov/FCW they were asked by their manager to provide their certifications, educational background, experience and what specifically they had worked on while at the agency. It was unclear who had originally solicited the information, the IRS employee said.
The request and list compilation made the employee uneasy, but they planned to remain on the job as long as they were permitted to do so.
“I’m feeling nervous, like most of my colleagues, but we will hold the line,” the employee said. “We took an oath to serve this country, and we plan on keeping it. Even though we are being used as scapegoats, we will hold the line and continue to do our work to the best of our abilities.”
A supervisor at the Homeland Security Department confirmed he was asked to provide a list of his probationary period employees. The regional offices at his component then sent the names of those workers back to field offices and requested information about each named individual’s performance. That supervisor was unaware of what would happen with the information.
New hires at the Environmental Protection Agency have already received a “notice” informing them that they had been identified as “an employee likely on a probationary/trial period,” a copy of which was obtained by Government Executive and Nextgov/FCW.
“As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you pursuant to 5 CFR $ 315.804,” the email said. “The process for probationary removal is that you receive a notice of termination, and your employment is ended immediately.”
The email noted employees’ rights as probationers and provided a fact sheet on probationary firings.
The collection of names comes as the Trump administration has publicly broadcast its intention to downsize the federal workforce, with the president vowing to eradicate the “cancer” within agencies. Trump has brought back Schedule F—now renamed Schedule Policy/Career—an initiative to strip an untold number of federal employees of their merit-based civil service protections and instead make them at-will workers who can be fired for political reasons. The administration this week made “delayed resignation” offers—which essentially equate to severance packages—to nearly every federal worker. Those offers suggested the administration will further seek layoffs, firings and agency eliminations.
A source familiar with the inner workings of OPM speculated three possible reasons the agency would want to gather the lists of probationers: it could be looking to eradicate certain roles, it could be searching for employees with affiliations that do not align with the administration’s interests or it could be aiming to fire all of them en masse.
While OPM in its guidance also noted probationers can be fired without appeal rights to the Merit Systems Protection Board, Michael Fallings, a partner at Tully Rinckey, noted agencies must still provide recent hires with a reason for their removal based on performance or conduct. If the agency simply stated it was seeking to find efficiencies or cut its workforce generally, Fallings suggested employees challenge their cases before the Office of Special Counsel as a prohibited personnel practice.
By re-interviewing employees or soliciting information on their backgrounds, Fallings speculated agencies may be looking for a “suitability” reason to fire staff. While the administration is hoping to move quickly, he added, its plans are “going to cause a lot of litigation.”
