Several provisions on employee discipline were upheld Image: fizkes/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA federal district court’s ruling invalidating parts of the Trump administration’s May 25 executive orders on disciplinary and union matters left in place several key provisions, particularly regarding the former set of issues. The court held that those were “legitimate exercises of the President’s authority” and in some cases have already been ruled to be outside the scope of allowable bargaining.
Left in place were several provisions governing the election of penalties in disciplinary cases, including that agencies:
* should consider all of an employee’s past misconduct, not just similar misconduct;
* need not use progressive discipline—ever-more-serious penalties for more serious infractions or repetition of the same one;
* need not suspend an employee first if the infraction merits removal; and
* need not apply the same penalty that was used in a previous similar case involving another employee, although they should “consider” what was done previously.
Also undisturbed were provisions telling agencies to: make full use of the probationary period during which employees have fewer appeal rights; consider using, in performance-related cases, disciplinary procedures that don’t require giving the employee a chance to improve first; no longer agree, as part of settlements with employees, to remove information about their performance or conduct from their personnel files; speed up the notice and decision process; collect and publish information on disciplinary actions; better educate supervisors and managers on how to carry out discipline; require OPM to issue rules elevating performance over longevity in RIF retention; and more.
On the bargaining-related orders, the judge similarly left undisturbed the creation of an interagency group to coordinate agency policies and practices on bargaining, and to have agencies increase their reporting to OPM of terms of contracts and arbitration awards.
