Federal Manager's Daily Report

In a sort of guide to the types of personnel decisions that managers and supervisors should not make, the Office of Special Counsel has called attention to a number of recent cases in which it intervened on behalf of employees to reverse agency actions.

The discrimination case involved an employee removed from a probationary supervisory position after telling her supervisor she was pregnant. The parties entered into a settlement agreement that included her voluntary return to a non-supervisory position and a performance award, OSC said.

Another case involved an employee who was dissuaded from pursuing a position at a higher level in a different division at the same agency because her supervisor “valued the employee and did not want to lose the employee to the other division”; she was promised a promotion which the agency then did not provide. After she filed a complaint with the OSC, she was promoted with back pay.

In another, an employee alleged that an agency official asked an applicant, who was a veteran, to withdraw from competition. “The resolution in this case included OSC-provided onsite training on prohibited personnel practices for management officials at the agency,” the OSC said.

OSC also said it reached settlements in three whistleblower retaliation cases, one involving allegations that the agency lowered a performance evaluation and did not provide a performance-based salary increase, and two related cases alleging that the agency subjected them to management directed inquiries, included negative information in their performance evaluations, and reassigned one of them.