The orders by President Donald Trump could save taxpayers more than $100 million a year, the White House estimated. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Trump issues orders making it easier to fire federal employees

President Donald Trump on Friday issued a series of executive orders to weaken the influence of government unions and make it easier for agencies to fire civil servants.

The orders will standardize agency rules to make it easier and quicker to remove poorly performing employees. They also direct federal agencies to renegotiate their labor contracts and cap the amount of paid time that workers can take off to conduct union-related business.


“The president is fulfilling his promise to promote more efficient government by reforming our civil service rules,” Andrew Bremberg, director of the president’s Domestic Policy Council, told reporters. “These executive orders will make it easier for agencies to remove poor-performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used.”

The changes could save taxpayers more than $100 million a year, the White House estimated. It referenced a 2015 Government Accountability Office report that found it can take a year or more to dismiss a permanent federal employee.

The largest federal employee union condemned Friday’s orders.

“This is more than union busting — it’s democracy busting,” said J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “This administration seems hellbent on replacing a civil service that works for all taxpayers with a political service that serves at its whim.”

In addition to hemming in union power, the executive orders could be abused to reduce accountability or punish whistleblowers, said Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

“Weakening civil service protection laws would make the government less effective and put us all at risk, “ he said. “It would impede Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch: Congress’s best sources of information are the employees inside agencies, and without robust protections and due process, more sources will remain silent.”

The executive orders are Trump’s latest salvo against the government workforce, which he has promised to reform as part of his “drain the swamp” agenda.

They direct agencies to charge rent to employees who use federal office space for union activity and to stop covering travel expenses for non-agency business.

Preference given to long-tenured workers will be eliminated. The common practice of agency gag orders, in which managers promise to keep silent about employees in exchange for their resignations, will be eliminated. Civil servants whose performance isn’t up to par will get 30 days to show improvements.

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Agencies will be required to report disciplinary activity to the Office of Personnel Management for publication. They are also directed to negotiate new contracts with unions, which also will be made public. Unions will be charged for the use of agency office space.

The use of “official time” — legally sanctioned time off for labor-related activities — will be capped at 25 percent of an employee’s working hours.

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found this week that more than 12,500 employees took advantage of official time in 2017. The Department of Veterans Affairs was among the worst offenders, the House panel found. There, 472 employees spent 100 percent of their working hours on labor-management-related business in fiscal 2017, according to the GOP report. Those employees included a VA nurse anesthetist and dentist each making more than $190,000 a year.

The moves are sure to be challenged by labor groups and Democrats, who have accused the administration of targeting labor for political purposes.

Meanwhile, worker complaints to the Federal Labor Relations Authority are piling up because the agency has been without a presidentially appointed general counsel since November. The vacancy has prevented labor complaints cases from

being prosecuted.

A senior administration official said on Friday that the White House had no announcement to make on the labor relations appointment.

