By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The Trump administration moved on Friday to strip hundreds of senior U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employees of civil service job protections, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.
HHS employees at several agencies received the email, which said members of their teams would have their jobs reclassified. The change means they can be fired at will. Previously, they could only be fired for cause and had appeal rights.
The move is in line with an overhaul announced by the administration in February of the government’s civil service system.
The overhaul gives the president more power to hire and fire up to 50,000 career federal employees who are being reclassified from Schedule F to Schedule Policy/Career.
An HHS official confirmed the email’s authenticity but did not respond to questions about how many staff would be affected and their agencies and positions. The category of employees involved, GS-15, usually consists of senior technical experts, managers, high-level policy staff and supervisors.
The email said that initially “a relatively modest number…on the order of hundreds not thousands” of HHS personnel in that category would be affected by the reclassification.
The email said “additional tranches” of conversions would follow. The official said there would be no mass layoffs at the department beyond those previously announced.
Trump pledged in his 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.
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 and Cynthia Osterman)
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