Tag Archives: jobs

Merit-Based to Depoliticize

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The Trump administration is moving to consolidate Federal employment/termination decisions in the OMB and out of the several separate Departments and agencies.

[DOGE personnel embedded in OMB began issuing] orders that have weakened other agencies’ control over their own workforce, in many cases bringing hiring, firing, and performance evaluation—which for some employees, will soon be based primarily on execution of the president’s agenda—under the purview of OPM.

Previously,

Most of the government is made up of mid- and low-level civil servants whose jobs have historically been sheltered from political hiring decisions.

That’s the problem that badly wants fixing.

Government hiring and firing, at any level of government, needs to be politicized to an extent in order to maximize the likelihood that government employees work to carry out the policies of the incumbent President, Department Secretaries, and agency heads. This does not require a return to full-up patronage, but it does require that what constitutes an assessment of merit include how hard and how effectively that employee works to execute those policies and how well a prospective employee can be expected to do so.

So Long, and No Thanks for the Memories

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Law school students and new recruits think they should run the major—or even minor—law firms at which they sought work.

In the days since Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps and other elite firms cut deals with the president to fend off punitive orders, their actions have set off protests and recruiting boycotts among the next wave of top young legal talent. Georgetown Law students canceled a recruiting event this week with Skadden Arps. A group of students and lawyers is circulating a missive on social media and over email, urging students at top schools to refrain from applying to the firms.
Several Columbia law students who signed on to start at the firms this summer are asking whether they can pull out of those commitments, one recruiter said. Junior lawyers at some firms, meanwhile, are rejecting their bosses’ requests to interview summer associates.

I wouldn’t call these Precious Ones “top young legal talent.” They’re too self-absorbed, too ate up with their own importance. The law firms are better off without these folks on their payroll.

So: bye, bye. Good luck to you in your sole proprietor law firms, and in your new small partnerships.

Hurt Feelings

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Lots of ex-Federal employees are feeling the pain of being terminated. Many in the private sector think that’s unimportant, and they’re correct to think so.

Catherine Byrd, who owned and ran her own business before she retired:

I don’t feel bad for them a bit. I’ve worked in the private sector all my life[.]

She noted that she’d been fired a number of times in her early working days, and said,

You know what you do? You go out and find another job, and there are plenty of jobs to find.

As indeed there are, even if not in an area that lets the fired bureaucrat follow his bliss.

And so, we get the hurt feelings of government employees who have been terminated. Recently fired Meredith Lopez is upset over the alleged general callousness toward federal workers being fired.

I think people forget that working in public service is not just a job, it can be a calling for many people[.]
For me, it is really about the ability to help people and communities on a personal level[.]

Judy Cameron is upset at the very concept of being fired from her government job.

All I know is I did not appreciate being fired. Let me do something wrong to fire me… It was just “Oh here, let’s kick you out like trash.”

And, of course—because that’s where the clicks and eyeballs are—the press hypes these things while ignoring the fact that none of them incur an obligation on the part of any employer, much less the government, to retain folks just because those folks want a particular job.

No. A government employee needs to be terminated if the job position itself is duplicative, excess to the government’s objective needs, or otherwise unnecessary. Recall, during the Obama Shutdown of 2011, the EPA acknowledged that most of its employees were unnecessary, furloughing 90% of them for the duration of the shutdown.

A government employee needs to be terminated if his performance is subpar as measured objectively, which requires a cessation of inflating annual reports and the even harder step of eliminating union objections to terminating for merit reasons.

He Thinks It’s a Countermove

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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) is making a big deal out of his offer of jobs in the Pennsylvania State government to those terminated Federal bureaucrats who would be interested.

The commonwealth recognizes that a workforce of dedicated and talented public servants is the backbone of a responsive government that can ensure the efficient and effective delivery of services for Pennsylvanians[.]

Kudos to Shapiro, I say, for all that his motive is so highly questionable. There’s no doubt that the vast majority of Federal bureaucrats are talented, dedicated workers, and being offered jobs at the State level that match their skill sets is a Good Thing.

None of that, though, alters the simple fact that Federal employment is not an inherent right and that Federal bureaucrats are not entitled to any Federal job, much less any Federal sinecure. Neither does any of that alter the simple fact that these Federal bureaucrats are unnecessary to the function of the Federal government, and their redundancy should be recognized and acted on.

Indeed, those making the Federal cuts have said from the outset that the bureaucrats’ firings do not in any way impugn their skill, talent, or dedication—it’s simply that they are not needed; their job positions themselves are redundant.

Another Precinct Pipes Up

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The Merit Systems Protection Board has ordered the Department of Agriculture to

temporarily reinstate all of its nearly 6,000 probationary employees, who were fired by the Trump administration last month.

Probationary employees are just that—in trial periods of their employment—and they can be fired for any reason at all during their probationary period. Merit, or its lack, need have nothing to do with their termination.

This board is an independent quasi-judicial agency whose three members are Presidential nominees subject to Senate confirmation. As such, the board is an arm of the Executive Branch and so subject to the control of the President, as the Supreme Court ruled in the matter of firing the chairman of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This is another “independent” agency that’s out of control and needs to be brought to heel.