Sponsors (25)
Official title: To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide for an alternative removal for performance or misconduct for Federal employees.
Introduced January 23, 2025 by Barry D. Loudermilk · Last progress January 23, 2025
The bill streamlines and speeds federal personnel actions and creates some taxpayer savings, but it does so by narrowing employee grievance and due‑process protections and increasing the risk of financial and procedural harm to federal workers.
Federal agencies and supervisors (and the employees they manage) get clearer, standardized, and faster personnel procedures for probation, adverse actions, furloughs, and appeals, reducing ambiguity and speeding final decisions.
Taxpayers (and agencies) can recoup improperly paid bonuses and stop annuity payments for felony-related service, producing direct cost savings and clearer processes for correcting retirement records.
The Act reduces duplicative grievance pathways and clarifies cross-references so agencies can resolve adverse actions and RIFs under a single, defined set of procedures, lowering litigation and administrative ambiguity.
Federal employees (and unions) lose significant procedural protections and grievance avenues — including narrowed chapter 71 access, bypassing of PIPs, and constrained appeal routes — making it easier for agencies to discipline or remove workers.
Employees and their families face immediate financial harm from demotions, loss of pay during appeals or emergency furloughs, annuity reductions for 'felonious service,' and potential bonus clawbacks.
Short, strict timelines for notice, response, and final decisions (often 7–15 business days) reduce employees' time to gather evidence and secure representation, disadvantaging those with limited resources.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Lengthens federal probation, speeds and tightens disciplinary/furlough rules, narrows grievance rights, adds annuity-denial for felonious service, and requires OPM rulemaking.
Changes federal civil service rules to lengthen probationary periods, streamline and speed disciplinary and furlough procedures, narrow grievance rights, and create new remedial and recoupment authorities for agencies. It adjusts pay-retention and SES rules, authorizes OPM rulemaking for implementation, and adds a mechanism to deny annuity credit for conviction-linked "felonious service." Many provisions change timelines, notice, and appeal windows for employees and supervisors and apply to actions after the law takes effect.