President
Administration officials say the changes are needed to give federal agencies more discretion to manage personnel and reward top performers, making the agencies much like the private sector.
Public sector unions say the moves undermine decades of civil service protections designed to prevent presidents from firing experienced career staff and replacing them with political loyalists. Federal workers and their attorneys warn the changes are demoralizing and that there’s not enough guardrails stopping administration officials from retaliating against employees who disagree with them.
“If you don’t do the will of Donald Trump and his appointees, then you stand to be fired and they’ll use performance as a rationale,” said Jacqueline Simon, director of public policy at the American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE, which represents federal workers.
Proposed rules unveiled last month would narrow federal workers’ options for appealing layoffs, formalize a stricter performance review process, and scrap the traditional preference for longer tenures when deciding who survives a reduction in force. A final rule taking effect Monday calls for reclassifying thousands of workers as policy-making, at-will employees who can’t appeal a termination.
Together these changes erode the protections for career staff across the government’s more than 2 million civilian employees.
The steady drip of regulatory changes comes after one of the largest federal workforce reductions in US history, a net decrease of roughly 250,000 jobs in 2025. Most cuts resulted from voluntary departures such as the “fork in the road” offer from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Many of Trump’s proposals have been tied up in litigation, including his bid to end collective bargaining rights for over 1 million workers across various agencies. Unions including AFGE also have sued over ending unionizing rights and to oppose the reclassification of thousands of employees.
Rating on a Curve
A major change for federal workers comes in shifting the employee review system.
The performance review rule proposal unveiled Feb. 23 would create a forced distribution system, or bell curve, limiting how many workers get top ratings of 4s and 5s while rating most as 3s or lower.
The lower ratings stirred concerns they’ll be used to force out some workers.
Federal agencies began implementing some performance review changes last year before the formal proposal, giving some employees lower ratings than in prior years.
“What would typically be considered going above and beyond your job title or scope” now gets an average rating, said one federal employee who’s worked at three agencies over the past decade. The decreased ratings have contributed to generally low morale, she said.
“It all ties together with the continuing efforts to just trash the civil service system and demoralize federal employees, except for the ultra-politically loyal,” said Peter Jenkins, senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Trump administration officials said the change aims to correct overly lenient reviews.
“All of these proposed changes are about creating accountability to the American people and creating a high-performance culture where employees who excel can be recognized and rewarded for their success,” said McLaurine Pinover, spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as the federal government’s human resources agency and sets workforce policies. “Political affiliation is irrelevant in a merit-based system.”
For fiscal year 2024, nearly half of all federal employees received the highest possible rating, the OPM said in its proposed rule text.
OPM Director Scott Kupor, in a December blog post, criticized “rampant ratings inflation and a lack of accountability for poor performers.”
The agency cited Fortune 500 companies that have used similar forced distribution ratings, including
Research has shown “standardized distribution can quickly enhance organizational performance and promote the success of merit-based reward systems,” the OPM said.
Improving the ratings system has long been a concern both for Democratic and Republican administrations, said Dan Meyer, an attorney at Tully Rinckey PLLC who represents federal employees. But it’s vital to have meaningful opportunity for appeals and independent inspectors general to monitor for political retaliation, he said.
“The problem is the president just gutted his inspectors general,” Meyer said.
Feeling Stuck
More than 300,000 people left their federal jobs last year, many of them through the voluntary resignation offer. But federal workers looking to leave found their private-sector options limited, said Colin Smalley, a local union representative with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and a US Army Corps of Engineers employee.
“There’s a lot of people that are looking for other opportunities,” said Smalley, who spoke in his capacity as a union rep. “I get the feeling that there is not a lot out there.”
The loss of telework, compounded by the personnel rule and performance rating changes, led to one federal worker’s recent decision to leave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after roughly two decades.
“Who’s stopping them from saying to every government employee that you’re poor, you have poor performance” and then firing them, said the former NRC employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect future career prospects.
The loss of telework options hit many workers hard, creating long commutes and limiting work-life balance, he said. Attempts to cancel union contracts—still tied up in litigation for many agencies—have frustrated workers and their managers who don’t know how to proceed with resolving disputes over work conditions and leaves of absence, he added.
A mid-career USDA researcher said she explored options for other jobs last year but relocation costs would be too much. Now she says she is determined to stay.
“Every additional pay period and quarter that I’m in this job is more money for my family long term,” the researcher said.
— With assistance from
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