Latest news with #ChuckEzell
Reuters
01-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US federal workforce remains steady despite Trump's efforts
WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday reported having 2.3 million people on federal payrolls in March, almost unchanged from prior months despite the Republican's efforts to shrink the size of government. The Office of Personnel Management, which functions as the HR department for the federal government, published figures on Tuesday on hiring and firing across thousands of government offices, with growth in some areas of government largely canceling out cuts elsewhere. Overall, the number of federal jobs – excluding postal workers and the military – was down about 23,000 from September, the last published report on overall staffing levels. To be sure, the numbers are only through March and Trump, who took office in January, has continued efforts to shrink the federal workforce. The administration has signed deals, for example, with at least 75,000 federal workers, agreeing to pay them for several months before they resign. A spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management said hundreds of thousands of such workers will drop off federal payrolls in October. 'This data marks the first measurable step toward President Trump's vision of a disciplined, accountable federal workforce and it's only the beginning,' Acting OPM Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement. Trump, with help from former adviser Elon Musk, kicked off a sweeping campaign in January to shutter federal offices and cut jobs. Federal worker unions and their allies pushed back in court, with judges ordering agencies in some cases to rescind or pause the firings. The new figures show a nosedive in hiring, which dropped by half in February from January. OPM ordered, opens new tab federal agencies to pause hiring on Inauguration Day, with exceptions for positions related to immigration, national security or public safety. The federal government hired fewer than 5,000 people in January, compared to about 20,000 in December before Trump returned to the White House. The Labor Department's own estimates on the size of the federal workforce, which are based on surveys of government payrolls rather than the Office of Personnel Management's more precise tally, have pointed to further tiny declines in federal employment in April and May. The figures released on Tuesday showed payrolls at the Social Security Administration, which administers pensions and other payments for millions of elderly Americans, had fallen to about 56,000 in March, down from about 58,000 in September. Payrolls at the Department of Homeland Security, which leads the president's efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, rose to about 232,000 in March from 228,000 in September.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Watchdog finds ‘rampant abuse' of remote work among federal employees during Biden administration
A U.S. government watchdog found 'rampant abuse' of work-from-home policies by federal workers, according to a new report released on Friday. The Inspector General of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees the federal workforce, found 'compliance failures and weak internal oversight' as the root cause of the problem. The report focused on procedures that allowed employees to work remotely, rather than whether they were effectively performing their jobs. The report sampled badging data, timesheet, and remote-work agreements of dozens of federal employees in 2024, during President Joe Biden's administration, following a 2023 request from Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who took issue with telework policies. 'Under the previous administration, OPMʼs telework and remote work policies were mismanaged and oversight was virtually nonexistent,' OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement. 'That era of telework abuse is over,' Ezell declared. 'At President Trumpʼs direction, OPM has restored in-person operations to ensure federal employees are working for the taxpayers.' On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies and departments to 'take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements' and require employees to return to the office on a full-time basis. Federal employees were required to return on March 3; therefore, the findings and recommendations of the OPM report, which aimed to develop written procedures detailing internal controls concerning remote work, are now considered closed, according to the executive summary. OPM is the chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the federal government's 2.8 million employees. President Trump has claimed that many federal workers took on second jobs while still being paid by the federal government, or were not fulfilling their duties when working remotely. There was a dramatic increase in working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic in the first Trump administration. Based on a small sample of timesheets, the report found that 58.1 percent of the sampled employees failed to meet the minimum requirements for in-office work in 2024. According to OPM's inspector general, three in ten (29.7%) telework agreements had lapsed, 21 percent of those sampled had discrepancies in their paperwork, and 15 percent did not have any approved agreements on file. The report did not investigate why this was the case, but suggested that possible reasons included 'weak or missing management controls,' 'negligence or carelessness,' and 'intentional fraud or abuse.' Under the order signed by President Trump mandating a return to in-office work, limited exemptions are allowed as determined by departmental heads. Similarly, new internal controls and compliance reviews have been set for employees who continue to telework. When workers were summoned back into their offices five days per week in March, many were met with less-than-desirable conditions, from cramped workspaces to dirty bathrooms. In addition to the return to the office, the Trump administration also sought to cut costs by reducing space and staff. Multiple federal employees across various agencies and departments told news outlets at the time that they found themselves working elbow-to-elbow as staff consolidated into smaller workspaces. Understaffed cleaning crews are reportedly struggling to keep up with the demand for tidy spaces, resulting in dirty bathrooms with no paper towels. Some staff were asked to bring their own toilet paper or help out by taking their trash home, a federal employee told USA Today.
The Independent
21-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Watchdog finds ‘rampant abuse' of remote work among federal employees during Biden administration
A U.S. government watchdog found 'rampant abuse' of work-from-home policies by federal workers, according to a new report released on Friday. The Inspector General of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees the federal workforce, found 'compliance failures and weak internal oversight' as the root cause of the problem. The report focused on procedures that allowed employees to work remotely, rather than whether they were effectively performing their jobs. The report sampled badging data, timesheet, and remote-work agreements of dozens of federal employees in 2024, during President Joe Biden 's administration, following a 2023 request from Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who took issue with telework policies. 'Under the previous administration, OPMʼs telework and remote work policies were mismanaged and oversight was virtually nonexistent,' OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement. 'That era of telework abuse is over,' Ezell declared. 'At President Trumpʼs direction, OPM has restored in-person operations to ensure federal employees are working for the taxpayers.' On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies and departments to 'take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements' and require employees to return to the office on a full-time basis. Federal employees were required to return on March 3; therefore, the findings and recommendations of the OPM report, which aimed to develop written procedures detailing internal controls concerning remote work, are now considered closed, according to the executive summary. OPM is the chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the federal government's 2.8 million employees. President Trump has claimed that many federal workers took on second jobs while still being paid by the federal government, or were not fulfilling their duties when working remotely. There was a dramatic increase in working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic in the first Trump administration. Based on a small sample of timesheets, the report found that 58.1 percent of the sampled employees failed to meet the minimum requirements for in-office work in 2024. According to OPM's inspector general, three in ten (29.7%) telework agreements had lapsed, 21 percent of those sampled had discrepancies in their paperwork, and 15 percent did not have any approved agreements on file. The report did not investigate why this was the case, but suggested that possible reasons included 'weak or missing management controls,' 'negligence or carelessness,' and 'intentional fraud or abuse.' Under the order signed by President Trump mandating a return to in-office work, limited exemptions are allowed as determined by departmental heads. Similarly, new internal controls and compliance reviews have been set for employees who continue to telework. When workers were summoned back into their offices five days per week in March, many were met with less-than-desirable conditions, from cramped workspaces to dirty bathrooms. In addition to the return to the office, the Trump administration also sought to cut costs by reducing space and staff. Multiple federal employees across various agencies and departments told news outlets at the time that they found themselves working elbow-to-elbow as staff consolidated into smaller workspaces. Understaffed cleaning crews are reportedly struggling to keep up with the demand for tidy spaces, resulting in dirty bathrooms with no paper towels. USA Today.
E&E News
02-06-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Trump proposal would make it easier to fire feds
The Trump administration released a proposal Monday that it says will target federal employees who engage in 'serious misconduct.' The draft rule, set for formal publication Tuesday, would expand the Office of Personnel Management's 'existing authority to take suitability actions against employees,' the proposal says. 'Because employees who engage in serious misconduct while in the Federal service should not remain in Federal service, OPM should not limit its ability to take action to a limited subset of factors.' The proposal comes as part of a broader push by the administration to downsize the federal government, including moves aimed at making it easier to fire workers deemed to have engaged in misconduct and those viewed as poor performers. Advertisement 'For too long, agencies have faced red tape when trying to remove employees who break the public's trust,' OPM acting Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement. 'This proposed rule ensures misconduct is met with consequence and reinforces that public service is a privilege, not a right.'
Business Insider
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Your government pension is going digital as DOGE targets paper documents stored in an old salt mine
The US government said it's finally bringing federal retirement into the digital age and leaving behind one of the strangest government facilities still in operation. In a major shift announced on Monday, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said that it will begin processing all new federal retirement applications digitally starting June 2. Paper applications will no longer be accepted from July 15, ending a 50-year bureaucratic tradition. "Retirement from federal service is finally entering the digital age," said OPM interim director Chuck Ezell. He called the move a "transformative step that honors the service of federal employees" with a retirement process "worthy of the 21st century." For decades, the federal government has stored and processed retirement paperwork in a converted mine 230 feet below Boyers, Pennsylvania. With more than 400 million records housed in 26,000 filing cabinets, the process was slow, manual, and reliant on the elevator's shaft — a system that Elon Musk described as "insane." "The elevator breaks down sometimes, and nobody can retire," Musk said at a White House press conference in February. Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, has been one of the loudest critics of the system, calling the paper-based process a symbol of government inefficiency and saying the aim was to "rightsize" federal bureaucracy. Federal retirement processing has long been a bottleneck, capping out at roughly 10,000 applications a month. In February, OPM released a promotional video showing that, under a DOGE challenge, it had successfully processed a retirement application digitally in just two days without printing a single page. Now, with the launch of the Online Retirement Application (ORA) system, OPM says retirement will be faster, more accurate, and less costly to taxpayers. But the modernization effort may have consequences. The limestone mine, a Cold War-era facility that employs hundreds in rural western Pennsylvania, could face an uncertain future. In February, a senior OPM source told Business Insider that many employees feared losing their jobs and that shutting down the mine would devastate the local economy. OPM didn't immediately reply to Business Insider's request for comments made outside working hours.
