Biden orders restoration of federal employee protections January 22 President Joe Biden signed an executive order Jan. 22 to overturn previous Trump administration union restrictions and to guarantee a higher minimum wage. (Alex Brandon/AP) President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday that overturned former President Donald Trump’s May 2018 orders to restrict federal collective bargaining. The previous orders, which were the subject of several lawsuits and labor practice challenges, mandated a more constrained use of official time, required agencies to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements under strict parameters and made it easier to fire federal employees. Under the just-signed order, agencies will no longer be required to pursue such stringent negotiations with federal unions.
Biden reverses Trump orders seen as hostile to federal workers Eric Yoder President Biden on Friday knocked out the main pillars of his predecessor’s policies toward the federal workforce by repealing Trump administration orders that restricted bargaining and appeal rights and another that sought to remove civil service protections from a large class of employees. Federal agencies for several years have cited the union-related orders to restrict the subjects over which they will bargain, although the rules needed to carry out the disciplinary policies were finalized only last fall. One of the orders, issued in October, could have turned tens of thousands of career employees or more essentially into political appointees, although time ran out on the Trump administration before it could make those changes.
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email Biden Signs Executive Order Killing Schedule F, Restoring Collective Bargaining Rights
The president also named Federal Labor Relations Authority Member Ernest DuBester to serve as the agency’s chairman.
Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Biden signed an executive order Friday afternoon rescinding a series of orders issued by former President Trump aimed at gutting federal employee unions and stripping federal workers of their civil service protections.
The Trump administration was aggressive in its approach to the federal workforce, and labor groups in particular. In 2018, Trump signed a series of executive orders seeking to make it easier to fire federal workers, streamline labor-management negotiations and restrict the scope of collective bargaining, and severely restricting the use of official time.
Legislators again call for a significant federal pay raise next year January 21 Federal employees would receive a total 3.2 percent pay increase next year under new legislation. (Stefan Klein/Istockphoto) Just weeks into 2021, some members of Congress are already looking to cement a record-high pay raise for federal employees in 2022. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., reintroduced the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act in the House Jan. 21, which would provide federal employees with a total 3.2 percent pay increase on their 2022 paychecks. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is expected to introduce a companion bill in the Senate. That pay increase would consist of a 2.2 percent basic pay adjustment and a 1 percent increase to locality pay, which is used to balance income for feds living in expensive parts of the country.
January 20, 2021 9:31 a.m.
As the President boarded the plane for Florida Wednesday morning, bidding farewell to his presidency in a brief speech at Joint Base Andrews, it appeared his administration had failed to carry out one of the most ambitious but under-the-radar power grabs the federal government had seen in years.
In October, two weeks before Election Day, the President signed an executive order creating a new tier of the civil service called “Schedule F” that would make a broad swath of workers on the federal payroll much easier to fire.
Those employees designated as Schedule F would have been more like the political appointees that cycle in and out of the government with each administration subject to political pressure and stripped of certain job protections guaranteed to protected government workers. The number of Schedule F employees could have reached into the thousands or tens of thousands, and the execution of the order would have s