Federal Manager's Daily Report

The union argues a longer period rewards management lapses in training and evaluating employees. Image: Ritu Manoj Jethani/Shutterstock.com

The AFGE union has urged Congress to allow the two-year probationary period for newly hired employees in use at DoD to expire at the end of this year as specified in a law enacted last year rather than extend it for another two years.

Last year’s version of the defense spending bill ordered that DoD return effective in 2023 to the standard one-year period for new hires in general use across the government. The House-passed version of this year’s version would stick to that schedule but the version pending a Senate vote would keep the longer period in effect for newly hired employees through 2024.

Federal management groups support the longer period, which was put in place at DoD in 2016 on grounds that many federal jobs require extensive training and on-the-job learning before a new employee can be assessed. However, AFGE and other unions representing DoD civilian employees argue that the longer period leaves employees for too long without the rights to challenge personnel actions that come with completing the period.

The AFGE raised that contention in a letter to defense leaders in both the House and Senate who ultimately will resolve differences between their versions of this year’s bill. “The whole point of a probationary period is to allow management an initial evaluation period during which an unsatisfactory employee can be terminated without cause and with minimal process. To suggest that an extended probationary period is necessary to retain a quality workforce is both specious and an insult to the DoD workforce,” it said.

It said that using a longer period “rewards management lapses” in training and evaluating employees and discourages job seekers from joining DoD “when they have options to work in other federal agencies with a one-year probationary period, or for private sector employers who are motivated to reduce turnover costs and have a commitment to retaining employees.”

In its letter the AFGE also asked that conferees keep House language to: prevent a future attempt to move competitive service federal employees into the excepted service, where they would lose many of their current rights, by solely an executive order; end the more restrictive personnel policies for TSA employees and move them into the GS; and provide a 2.4 percent of salary “inflation bonus pay” for DoD employees with salaries below $45,000.

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2022 Federal Employees Handbook