In a recent press release touting the administration’s reduction in the federal workforce, OPM put the figure in the “tens of thousands.” Image: iStock.com/Douglas Rissing
The impact of pending reductions-in-force could be much larger than the commonly used numbers of 40 across 17 agencies, OPM has told a federal court, while adding that “several agencies are now not planning to proceed with several of the RIFs that had been planned at other times.”
The statement came as the Trump administration is resisting a judge’s directive to provide for her inspection the “Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s lifting of the injunction she had issued against the executive order and guidance telling agencies to prepare those plans.
The AFGE union and other parties in a suit before District Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California have asked the judge to review those plans for possible violations of the Administrative Procedure Act. Under the high court’s ruling, such a violation could be grounds for an injunction against an agency RIF/reorganization program.
In a filing with the court, the Justice Department argued that the plans are not subject to court review under the APA because they have not been finalized.
The filing also says the court misinterpreted events by stating that the case involves 40 pending RIFs across 17 agencies, saying that those figures represented a technical aspect of the process: requests to OPM to approve “competitive areas” for RIFs that have been defined for less than 90 days. “A mere request for such approval does not mean that a decision to engage in RIFs, let alone the specific scope of any RIFs, is close to final,” it says.
An accompanying statement from an OPM official says that that count was from early in the process and that it “likely understated the number of contemplated RIFs that were enjoined by the Court’s injunction,” citing a later figure of such requests of 70 from 19 agencies.
Those agencies, he said, are: the Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Education, HHS, DHS, HUD, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury departments, plus AmeriCorps, EPA, GSA, SBA, SSA, NSF and OPM.
However, he added that “I have been informed in the past week that several agencies are now not planning to proceed with several of the RIFs that had been planned at other times. Instead of proceeding with RIFs reflected in competitive area waiver requests, several agencies are now planning to reassess their workforce needs following intervening events – deferred resignations, natural attrition, and other voluntary separations.”
“The fact that several agencies have chosen not to proceed with RIFs that they may have contemplated at other times underscores that ARRPs are not final agency actions, but rather non-final planning documents,” he said.
He also said that “OPM lacks complete information on the scope of any such RIFs, including how many positions would have been affected.”
In a recent press release touting the administration’s reduction in the federal workforce, though, OPM put the figure in the “tens of thousands.”
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