The incoming Trump administration has singled out civilian federal
employees for attacks on jobs, employment security and pensions. According to
the Washington Post,
“President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are
drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed
against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal
workers have received for a generation.”
The federal civil service, which consists of
over 2.75 million workers, excluding members of the armed forces, the judiciary
and elected officials, has come under relentless attack from the political
right for decades. Right-wing propaganda depicts federal workers as overpaid
and privileged drones in an attempt to divide the working class and divert
anger over declining living standards and growing inequality against a section
of the working class itself. The aim is to dismantle whatever remains of job protections
and benefits that are based on civil service laws and contracts with federal
employee unions. This is despite the best efforts of the unions over many years
to help impose job cuts and wage and benefit concessions.
In 2012, House Republicans proposed a 10 percent
federal workforce reduction as part of their fiscal budget for that year.
According to the Post, the incoming
administration will implement “[h]iring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a
green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the
government’s dime and less generous pensions.” In addition, the Trump White
House will seek “guidance” from the Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott
Walker, who in 2011 provoked mass protests at the state capital by shredding
public employee rights and imposing sweeping concessions on public workers.
The new administration will also follow the
example of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who, as governor of Indiana, tied
state worker pay to performance ratings.
According to Jason Chaffetz, Republican
congressman from Utah and chairman of the House Committee on Government
Oversight and Reform, the plan to slash federal employee pensions will be
modeled on his home state, which recently replaced defined benefit pensions
with market-based defined contribution plans such as 401(k)s. The switch from
traditional pensions will initially affect newly hired workers, according to
press reports.
The assault on federal workers is based on the
ten-point “Contract with the American Voter” released by Donald Trump in late
October. The statement declared that within its first 100 days in office, the
Trump administration would enact “a hiring freeze on all federal employees to
reduce the federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public
safety, and public health).”
The Post quotes
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a member of Trump’s transition team, as
saying that Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief White House strategist, will lead the
attack on federal workers. Until signing on as the head of Trump’s presidential
campaign last August, Bannon headed the Breitbart News web site, a platform for
the fascistic alt-right that regularly rails against the so-called “privileged
class” of government workers in Washington.
Contrary to the myth of a ballooning “big
government” promoted by the right wing, the US civil service has undergone
numerous cutbacks in its workforce under both Republican and Democratic
presidents. As a result, the number of federal employees today is consistent
with the number employed in the 1960s, despite a near-doubling of the US
population since then.
A likely precedent for Trump’s plan to slash
workers’ pay and job protections is the 2014 Veterans’ Choice Act, signed into
law by President Obama. Passed during the scandal at
the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) that year, the law facilitates the
firing of VA workers while giving employees less than a week to appeal their
dismissal.
Prior to the Veterans’ Choice Act, workers had
the option of appealing their dismissal to the Merit Systems Protection Board,
established as part of the civil service system to prevent politically
motivated firings.
Under a Trump administration, such firings are
likely to become the rule. During the presidential campaign, Trump regularly
declared that if elected he would shut down government agencies such as the
Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education. At the same
time, Trump is pledging a massive increase in military spending and packing his
administration-in-waiting with military figures.
The planned assault on federal workers exposes
the cynicism behind repeated statements by Democratic Party leaders—from Obama
and incoming Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer to Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren—suggesting that Trump may enact measures to improve the lot of
workers and pledging their readiness to collaborate with him.
The American Federation of Government Employees
(AFGE), the largest federal employee union, has remained silent on Trump’s
agenda. On November 9, the day after the election, AFGE President J. David Cox
Sr. released a brief press statement declaring, “We will work with the Trump administration on areas of common ground,
as we have with every administration for generations.”
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