A federal judge ordered the staff management office on Thursday to cancel previous instructions by telling the federal agencies to “quickly determine whether these employees should be kept at the agency”.
The instructions, communicated in a January 20 note And on February 14 by internal email, are “illegal” and “should be arrested, canceled,” said William Alsup judge in the North District of California.
The decision does not restore dismissed employees.
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The judge asked the personnel management office to communicate on Friday at the Ministry of Defense – before the provided probation layoffs – which he deemed invalid.
Alsup also ordered a planned audience in which the Director of Acting Staff Management Charles Ezell will testify. The time of this hearing is not clear.
“The staff management office has no authority under the law in the history of the universe, to hire and dismiss employees within another agency,” said Alsup on Thursday evening. “He can hire his own employees, yes. Can draw them. But he cannot order or order another agency to do so. »»
“OPM does not have the power to tell an agency of the American government, apart from itself, which they can hire and which they can dismiss, end. So on the merits, I think we are starting with this important proposal, “he said.
Alsup called probation employees “the vital element of our government”.
“They enter low and they progress, and that’s how we renew ourselves and reinvents,” he said.
Probationary workers are employees who are recent hiring or sometimes long -standing employees which have recently been transferred to new positions.
“The government’s position, for the first time in the history of the United States, is that these employees can be dismissed,” said a lawyer for the complainants, Danielle Leonard. “It’s not the law, your honor. Employees and probation agencies have obligations before dismissing probationary employees. »»
“The government should not operate in secrecy with regard to wholesale orders to dismiss so many people,” argued Leonard in court.
There was a significant disagreement as to the fact that the OPM telephone call for agencies educating the dismissal of probation employees in mid-February was an “order” or “request”.
“Something aberration occurs, not only in a single agency, but throughout the government, in many agencies on the same day, the same thing. It does not seem to you that someone ordered that it happens, as opposed to: “Oh, we have just advised”, posed Alsup to local assistant prosecutor Kelsey Helland, who was the only representative of the government at the hearing.
“An order is generally not formulated as a request,” said Helland. “Ask doesn’t order to do something.”
Helland suggested that impacted employees should go through the special advice or Merit Systems Protection Board office to combat their employment status – and that a temporary prohibition order like the latter would not be necessary.
“Do they really happy to this court that all these federal employees are menting, your honor?” Leonard asked. “This is what the lawyer says. I don’t think it’s credible.
A spokesperson for the OPM did not immediately respond to a comment request Thursday evening.
Hundreds of thousands of people could have been affected by the Trump administration guidelines, according to data from OPMAlthough the exact number of people who were dismissed were not immediately clear.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government employees, one of the unions who brought the case, described the decision “an initial first victory for patriotic Americans through this country who were illegally dismissed from their employment by an agency that had no authority to do so.”
“The orientation of the OPM to agencies to engage in the blind dismissal of federal probation employees is illegal, simple and simple, and our union will continue to fight until we put an end to these demoralizing and harmful attacks against our public service once and for all,” said Kelley in a press release.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipalities, said: “We know that this decision is only a first step, but this gives federal employees a respite … We will continue to advance this case with our partners until federal workers are protected against these baseless layoffs.”