IFPTE Joins With Federal Workers Alliance to Urge DOD to Support NDAA Provision to Prevent Patronage System in Federal Government
Last week, IFPTE joined the Federal Workers Alliance (FWA) letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gil Cisneros requesting DoD weigh in with Congress and support inclusion of language in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to prevent “Schedule F” or any similar effort from a presidential administration to weaken and politicize the federal civil service and circumvent merit principles, due process and competitive hiring for federal workers.
The letter was sent as Congressional negotiations over the final NDAA text were being finalized and prepared for floor votes in Congress before the end of the year. The previous administration issued an Executive Order to create Schedule F in 2020, which was vocally opposed by IFPTE, other federal unions, and numerous organizations committed to good governance and anticorruption. While President Biden rescinded Schedule F in his first day as President, preventing future such efforts to decimate competitive hiring and merit principles and fire at-will scores of highly qualified nonpartisan federal employees remains one of the highest priorities for IFPTE and federal employee unions.
In July, the House of Representatives passed a NDAA for Fiscal Year 2023, H.R. 7900, that includes the “Preventing A Patronage System Act” ( PPSA) in Section 5705 of the NDAA. As a standalone bill, the bipartisan PPSA (H.R. 302, S. 4702) was introduced by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA).
The FWA’s letter reminds DoD leadership that the purpose of PPSA is to prevent any presidential administration from unilaterally moving large numbers of federal civil service positions into the excepted service, “a move that would eviscerate the federal government’s merit system principals, politicize the federal workforce, and deny federal workers their due process rights.”
The letter further notes that the language related to preventing Schedule F or a similar attack on the civil service is key for DoD: “Presently, qualified nonpartisan civil servants are hired through a competitive examination process to serve in roles that inform, support, and analyze foreign policy, national defense strategy, training and education curriculum, defense industrial policy, procurement, and homeland security policies — but the Schedule F executive order could have converted these important positions into political appointments where federal employees can be fired by a president for any reason and their political appointee replacements hired with no required qualifications.“
If Congress fails to include the language in the NDAA, IFPTE is committed to working with our coalition partners to make sure a legislative fix is passed in next year.