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Civil Rights for Civil Servants
Hear Shaun Southworth and Lydia Taylor explain federal employee rights, public service, workplace systems, and the people navigating them.
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Calibration Panels and the 40 Percent Cap: What Federal Employees Should Ask For
"Calibration panel" is a term many federal employees are hearing this fall, and one of those panels may be deciding your performance rating right now. Reporting from Government Exe...
Can a Federal Employee Refuse an Illegal Order? What 5 U.S.C. Ā§ 2302(b)(9)(D) Protects
Can a federal employee refuse an order to break the law without being punished for it? Under federal law, most career employees can, and a story in the Washington Post this week is...
Federal Judge Rules OPM Violated the Privacy Act by Giving DOGE Access to Employee Records
A federal court has ruled that OPM violated the Privacy Act when it gave DOGE agents broad access to the personal information of tens of millions of past, current, and aspiring fed...
GAO Report Warns NOAA Satellite Cuts Could Leave a Weather Data Gap
Experts told CNN this week that cuts to NOAAā€™s next generation of weather satellites set American forecasting back nearly a decade. The Government Accountability Office report behi...
What an "Indicative Ruling" Means for the VA Union Contract Fight
Yesterday we covered how the VA is telling employees that the union contract is canceled while the appeals court calls the question unresolved. On Friday night, the union filed a n...
Student Loan Default Crackdown Reportedly Planned for After the Election: What Federal Employees Should Know
If your federal student loan is in default, new reporting says the government is getting ready to restart collection, including garnishing wages and seizing tax refunds. Nothing ha...
OPM Repeals the One-Year Time-in-Grade Wait: Merit or Favoritism?
OPM has finalized the repeal of the federal time-in-grade rule, ending the one-year wait that General Schedule employees have faced before becoming eligible for a promotion. The re...
VA Says Your Union Contract Expired. The Court Order It Cites Calls the Question "Unresolved."
The VA has told employees that their AFGE union contract has expired and that managers now follow VA policy alone. The appeals court order the VA is relying on says something diffe...
BOP Lost in Court, Re-Terminated Its Union Contract Anyway, and Lost Again
What happens when an agency loses in court and does the same thing again under a new label? Bureau of Prisons employees just saw the answer. A federal judge in Connecticut ruled th...
Labor Department to Recertify Every Approved Accommodation Each Year: What Employees Should Know
Your agency approved your reasonable accommodation. Can it make you prove you still need it every year? At the Department of Labor, the answer is now yes, and the process starts ne...
FLRA Puts Union Election Rules Back After Court Ruling: What the Fine Print Says
The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) has put its old union election rules back on the books after a federal judge threw out the boardā€™s attempt to move that power to its th...
Schedule G Explained: 25 Political Appointees, 22 at the VA, and No Public Record for a Year
Schedule G is a new category of political appointee that the White House created in July 2025, and for more than a year there was no public record that anyone was serving in it. Th...
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