Unions sue over new rules expanding feds power to fire workers

Seven federal employee unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, sued the Office of Personnel Management in the Northern District of California over new rules they say let the office fire career employees and then review its own firing decisions.

The Suitability Rule repurposes a tool once used to screen job applicants into a weapon against employees already on the payroll, cutting out the independent Merit Systems Protection Board and Federal Circuit review in favor of an appeal back to OPM itself. OPM's own estimate, cited in the complaint, projects that half of all federal removals will shift into this track, affecting a large share of the roughly two million-person federal workforce.

A second challenged rule, issued July 7, lets OPM force agencies into standardized distributions of performance ratings — essentially grading employees on a curve regardless of actual performance, something the unions say the office had prohibited for decades. The plaintiffs, including AFSCME and several Bay Area AFGE locals covering Social Security, EPA, and VA staff, cite prior court losses for the administration on mass firings and canceled bargaining agreements as evidence of a pattern.

Neither the unions nor OPM responded to requests for comment, leaving the government's side of this one entirely unstated for now.

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