Future of the “Administrative State?”

[ssaogc]

Nov 20, 2024 17:59:28 GMT -5 greyhound said:

Is this an accurate statement of the law for federal employee contracts:
1. An Executive Order does not override a CBA during the express term of the CBA, but does go into effect once the CBA goes into renewal
2. A new law or government-wide regulation overrides a CBA, even during its express term.

It will not matter even if this is accurate. 

the incoming administration does not follow or honor CBAs.  The last time the incoming administration was in office they took away union time that was guaranteed in the CBA via executive order. 


I predict that they will order everyone back into office even if it is to conduct telephonic hearings/MS Teams hearings from the office, the union will file an Unfair Labor Practice and even if the union prevails at the regional director level such finding will not be able to be enforced as there will likely be no General Counsel at the FLRA to take action or if there is they will do what the administration directs. 

I need to get that second car since I will be returning to the office on the majority if not all of my scheduled work days. Twelve months to go and I hope I can leave out the back door without anyone really caring. 

there may be more than anticipated ALJ attrition so hiring will likely follow but such hiring may deviate from the norm. If you are registered with a certain party you may not get an interview and if you are registered as independent I would not be shocked if you are asked why you are registered as such and who did you vote for in the last election. 

[Topperlaw]

All of the talk of replacing ALJs with AI is absurd. ONLY THE COURTS can decide what constitutes "due process." The Senate is simply not going to roll the dice and take a chance that the courts will deem their scheme a violation of due process.

[x]

Although you don't use the "m" word, I sense some mandate-think.
Most people didn't vote for the president-elect -- 49.x% did, and his popular vote margin is tiny compared to Biden's. The relatively few decisive voters who separated the candidates this time didn't like the burst of inflation -- we don't know that they want the federal government slashed.
Of course, the federal workforce has not been and is not burgeoning as suggested by another poster in this thread. The ratio of general population to federal government employees has grown over the decades.

[greyhound]

Nov 20, 2024 10:23:33 GMT -5 hillsarealive said:

Nov 19, 2024 20:35:03 GMT -5 nylawyer said:

I know, I wasnt talking OHO specifically. I was just speculating that, if you wanted to get mass layoffs as quickly and painlessly as possible without recourse, that may be the way.

Just close the government. Keep open things that are essential, or that aren't impacted by the closure. Do that for months, and without actually firing anyone you achieve your goal, as a bunch of federal workers end up quitting their jobs.

If some future administration wanted to get rid of a lot of federal workers while retaining the ones most loyal to that administration, it could adopt a new loyalty oath that most feds would be reluctant to sign.  

Say the flat earth party wins in 2028 election.  As a condition of federal employment, you have to pledge that the earth is flat.  Pretty soon, 90% of federal employees are gone and the 10% still working are either flat-earthers or, I suppose, unprincipled round-earthers.  

A new loyalty oath along these lines seems unlikely, but still possible--at least in the present context where there is talk (perhaps overblown, perhaps not) of terminating large numbers of federal employees.  

The Vaccine Mandate and the forced-feeding of concepts such as they/them pronouns and white privilege were essentially a loyalty test. Most federal employees who disagreed just went along with those tests and I am sure most would do the same in the opposite direction.

[february]

Nov 20, 2024 20:53:41 GMT -5 greyhound said:

Nov 20, 2024 10:23:33 GMT -5 hillsarealive said:

If some future administration wanted to get rid of a lot of federal workers while retaining the ones most loyal to that administration, it could adopt a new loyalty oath that most feds would be reluctant to sign.  

Say the flat earth party wins in 2028 election.  As a condition of federal employment, you have to pledge that the earth is flat.  Pretty soon, 90% of federal employees are gone and the 10% still working are either flat-earthers or, I suppose, unprincipled round-earthers.  

A new loyalty oath along these lines seems unlikely, but still possible--at least in the present context where there is talk (perhaps overblown, perhaps not) of terminating large numbers of federal employees.  

The Vaccine Mandate and the forced-feeding of concepts such as they/them pronouns and white privilege were essentially a loyalty test. Most federal employees who disagreed just went along with those tests and I am sure most would do the same in the opposite direction.

I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.

[nylawyer]

Nov 20, 2024 19:18:20 GMT -5 Topperlaw said:

All of the talk of replacing ALJs with AI is absurd. ONLY THE COURTS can decide what constitutes "due process." The Senate is simply not going to roll the dice and take a chance that the courts will deem their scheme a violation of due process.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again- anyone concerned about ALJs being replaced by AI are clearly working with very different computers and software than I am.

[superalj]

I think the bigger and more immediate concern is immediate end to telework regardless of the collective bargaining agreement; heavy handed and micro management to make the job as miserable as possible; and RIFs due to not enough cases and just because they want to burn it all down.

[FrogEsq]

I'm still laughing.

It was just a few years ago our HO could not get office supplies! 

[Top Tier]

Nov 21, 2024 9:17:41 GMT -5 superalj said:

I think the bigger and more immediate concern is immediate end to telework regardless of the collective bargaining agreement; heavy handed and micro management to make the job as miserable as possible; and RIFs due to not enough cases and just because they want to burn it all down.

Maybe the bigger and more immediate concern isn't telework, but the existential (real) threat to our national security resulting from the administration's planned attack on the integrity of our institutions such as DOD, DOJ, CIA, FBI, NGA, NSA, etc., through appropriation deprivation, hiring freeze, and personnel RIFs.

If the incoming administration is permitted to do what it says it is going to do, we have way more to be concerned about than having to work from an ODS.  Many might be thankful that they even get to work from the office 5 days a week.

[jagvet]

I need to take break from the board. Maybe a couple of weeks. Some of you have crazier theories than Ross Perot and the black helicopters disrupting his daughter's wedding.

Change is definitely coming, fed-wide. It is long overdue. Look at our rube-goldberg dismissal process, paternalistic handling of CDRs, remands over nothing, and you may understand why this is necessary at OHO. See you in December.

[Top Tier]

Interesting read from govexec.com:

Trump expected to tap Schedule F architect promising widespread federal layoffs to head OMB

- Russ Vought previously held the job and now says he wants federal workers to be "viewed as the villains."

November 21, 2024 04:45 PM ET

... In his interview with Carlson, Vought said federal employees are “very resistant” to direction from political appointees and derisively referred to the civilian workforce as “the administrative state” and “the regime.” He added the federal employees built their “mountain” on the difficulty of firing them and said Trump appointees must enter government well-versed in the management tools at their disposal.

In speeches over the last two years uncovered by ProPublica, Vought said he wants to put federal employees “in trauma” to the point they no longer want to go to work.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”

Vought told Carlson this week the president has to move quickly with a “radical constitutional perspective” to dismantle the bureaucracy. No agencies should be treated as independent, he said, presidents should be able to pick and choose what federal appropriations to actually expend—a proposal Trump has himself backed—and federal employees should be at-will. When Carlson said most federal employees “suck” at their jobs, Vought agreed.

“You’re telling the truth,” he said. “That’s why you gotta have a massive effort to dramatically reduce it, so the good ones rise to the top and everyone else is finding other work.”"

www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/trump-tap-schedule-f-architect-promising-widespread-federal-layoffs-head-omb/401228/?oref=ge-home-top-story 

For the employment law experts out there, would this constitute a hostile work environment if it came to fruition? 

[mbd]

Nov 21, 2024 14:47:30 GMT -5 jagvet said:

I need to take break from the board. Maybe a couple of weeks. Some of you have crazier theories than Ross Perot and the black helicopters disrupting his daughter's wedding.

Change is definitely coming, fed-wide. It is long overdue. Look at our rube-goldberg dismissal process, paternalistic handling of CDRs, remands over nothing, and you may understand why this is necessary at OHO. See you in December.

I’m confused where in the everything-must-go rhetoric of the DOGE you see nuanced plans for policy changes re CDRs, remands, and dismissals.