The now iconic image of an elated Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw may be unsettling – even to dyed-in-the-wool Republicans – but it does effectively capture the daunting challenges facing the Trump administration’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DOGE’s seemingly draconian steps to lay off federal workers in large numbers are the inevitable result of federal workers’ union collective-bargaining agreements and civil-service protections that have made it almost impossible to fire any individual federal employee based on job performance.
These agreements and protections have made a federal job a lifetime position immune from performance assessments and other measures of employee accountability present in the private sector. Unless Congress steps in to reform federal public-employee union agreements and the civil service system, President Donald Trump’s only choice to downsize the government is to proceed with large-scale reductions in force.
Both men understand that deep cuts in the federal payroll are the only feasible way to win back control of the government so it can serve the president’s agenda that he ran on in 2024. Trusting that new agency heads can fix the workforce of one of the alphabet soup agencies is wishful thinking.
THE FULL TRUTH ABOUT THE GREAT THINGS DOGE CAN AND CANNOT DO
When I was a director at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2010-2015, I saw firsthand how employees are nearly completely immune from performance evaluation or firing. And at that time, SEC employees could be evaluated on a performance scale of 1 to 5.
The current publicly available 2023 union collective-bargaining agreement for the SEC states that employees will be evaluated on performance as “acceptable” or “unacceptable,” essentially pass/fail—and in many schools these days, everyone passes. During my tenure USA Today – not exactly conservative friendly – reported that federal workers are more likely to die on the job than be fired.
Moreover, when I was with the SEC, in one of the rare instances when managers succeeded in firing an employee, the little-known Office of Special Counsel ordered reinstatement.
President Trump has highlighted the importance of this obscure office by firing the Biden appointee that heads it. The president’s action is a necessary step to re-establish control over the federal bureaucracy. The D.C. Circuit Court lifted an injunction against the firing Thursday and the office head resigned. Leaving a Biden-era official in that job would have frustrated the administration’s attempt to shrink the bloated bureaucracy.
LET DOGE SINK ITS TEETH INTO OUR BLOATED TECH INFRASTRUCTURE
The Trump administration’s decision to fire all federal employees in their probationary period is also a direct result of the iron-clad job protection created by collective bargaining agreements and civil-service protections like the Office of Special Counsel. Federal employees in their first year generally do not enjoy the union and civil-service protections granted after one year on the job.
Who pays the price for federal working conditions free of accountability? U.S. taxpayers.
When I joined the SEC staff in 2010 and tried to reform the examination program that had missed Bernie Madoff’s fraud and massive Ponzi scheme despite numerous examinations, I received a plain manila envelope in my inbox with a copy of false accusations against my predecessor that had been shared with Congress and the press as a warning of what could happen to me if I pushed for change in the exam program.
What I soon learned was that although many federal workers join the government out of patriotism and a desire to serve, the unnatural working conditions steadily grind such employees down and they start to go along with the system where longer-tenured workers often discourage extra effort.
Indeed, lifetime employment for employees in the federal government is contrary to the U.S. Constitution and is not available to workers in the private sector. In fact, the only lifetime position created by the Constitution is federal judges.
In addition, the Constitution prohibits the creation of titles of nobility that created a lifetime aristocracy in the United Kingdom. No one in the private sector who is working and paying taxes has a lifetime position. Federal workers should be in the same situation as the taxpayers they serve.
As President Barack Obama was fond of saying, “Elections have consequences.” The November 2024 election showed that Americans are tired of unaccountable federal employees who fail to address their fundamental concerns, including inflation and massive spending on wasteful programs at home and abroad.
With a federal budget that comprises almost 25% of the nation’s GDP, Congress needs to reform the rules governing federal employees to help rein in profligate government spending and waste. All Americans would be more comfortable with a federal workforce that plays by the same employment rules as the rest of working Americans.
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