A policy change could make it easier to fire federal workers

Policy changes coming out of Washington could make it easier to fire some federal workers.

The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, filed proposed regulations in the Federal Register on April 23, 2025, that would reclassify about 50,000 career civil servants as “at-will” employees, reports The Conversation.

The change would affect an estimated 2% of nearly all of the 3 million federal workers who would then experience a shift in how the government classifies their jobs, renaming their classification “Schedule Policy/Career.”

The Conversation reviewed what happened nearly two centuries ago when President Andrew Jackson fired half of the nation’s civil servant workforce. It was replaced with a spoils system that rewarded political loyalists.

“The result was not only an utterly incompetent administration, but widespread corruption,” write Sidney Shapiro, a professor of law at Wake Forest University, and Joseph P. Tomain, Dean Emeritus and Wilbert and Helen Ziegler Professor of Law, at the University of Cincinnati.

Toman and Shapiro are authors of four books including the one cited in The Conversation titled “How Government Built America.”  Tomain’s research and teaching interests focus in the areas of energy law, land use, regulatory policy and contracts.

Read the full story in The Conversation online.

Learn more about Professor Joseph Tomain online.

Featured top image courtesy of Istock.