The Trump Administration recently laid plans to fractionalize the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Federal Government’s makeshift HR department of roughly 5,000 employees. The component of this plan that is under the most scrutiny seems to be the idea of designating OPM’s recruitment and promotion policies to the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Union officials argue that doing so would threaten protection for the merit system, which is commonly contended as crucial to a properly functioning civilian labor force of a democratic government. Proponents cite that moving HR responsibilities to top executive positions for major corporations had beneficial impacts for those companies, and so such should be the same in the federal space. Daily tasks purely of the HR nature would be moved to the General Services Administration (GSA), which would retain its acronym but become re-titled as the General Services Agency. The main resistance to this idea revolves around the job security, location, and future of current OPM employees. The third plan, which is to shift background checks for prospective federal workers to the Department of Defense (DoD), has met the least objection of the three initiatives. There is still opposition nonetheless, most of which is defined by hesitation as Union leaders note the administration may just be moving these investigative duties to the DoD merely “for the sake of moving it.” Kathleen McGettigan, Chief Management Officer at OPM, has been confirmed as in charge of the logistical tasks related to the agency’s reorganization.
Until Next Time,
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Dismantling OPM