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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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OPM Cut the Workload Question: What Changes When Your Agency Runs Its Own Employee Survey
OPM's proposed rule on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey would cut the required questions from sixteen to ten, and one of the questions on the chopping block is "My workload is...
IRS Audit Collections Fell 35% the Year It Lost a Quarter of Its Audit Staff, Watchdog Finds
IRS audit collections fell 35 percent last year, according to a new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, in the same year the agency lost roughly 27 p...
Shutdown Averted Until December 11: What the Continuing Resolution Means for Federal Employees
A government shutdown on October 1 has been averted for federal employees, pending the President's signature. The House voted 370 to 48 to pass a continuing resolution that keeps a...
Missing Paragraphs and Phantom Citations: The Drafting Errors Inside the EEOC's Proposed EEO Overhaul
The EEOC proposed rule that would rewrite how every federal employee's discrimination complaint gets decided contains something you would not expect in an officially published regu...
$1.5 Trillion for Defense, $0 for Your Raise: The Math Behind the 2027 Federal Pay Freeze
The 2027 federal pay freeze was justified by the White House on the grounds that a raise would be "irresponsible" — a savings of $26 billion, by the administration's own letter to ...
One Whistleblower, Millions of Mail Ballots: Inside the USPS Report Congress Just Published
A USPS whistleblower report published by Senator Richard Blumenthal's office on September 1 warns that a rushed new digital system for overseeing mail ballots could delay — or outr...
Inside the Unions' Lawsuit Against OPM: Can One Agency Fire You and Hear Your Appeal?
The unions’ lawsuit against OPM over the new suitability and performance rules is being covered as a fight about making it easier to fire federal employees. After reading the entir...
Federal Judge Orders DOGE to Turn Over IRS Taxpayer-Data Communications by September 14
DOGE must turn over its internal communications about the IRS taxpayer-data sharing deal by September 14 — a federal judge has ordered it. After more than a year in which DOGE’s ro...
No 2027 Raise for Most Federal Employees: What the Alternative Pay Plan Freeze Means
There will be no 2027 federal pay raise for most civilian federal employees. Last week, the White House sent Congress the alternative pay plan letter that sets federal pay for next...
DOL Emailed Disability Accommodation Data to a Personal Inbox: What Affected Federal Employees Should Know
If you asked the Department of Labor for a disability accommodation, your name — and the reason you asked — may be sitting in somebody’s personal email inbox right now. That is wha...
The Fork in the Road, 18 Months Later: 20,557 Replacements Were Hired
You remember the Fork in the Road email — the subject line, and the one-word reply: Resign. Eighteen months later, the numbers are in: the government hired your replacements. Somet...
Petty Friday: Who Is Andrea Lucas? The EEOC's Chair — and Its Most Effective Opponent
It’s Petty Friday — our weekly commentary for federal employees, where we take the week’s civil rights news with a little humor and a lot of receipts. This week: Andrea Lucas, the ...
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