Attorneys for Federal Employees — Nationwide

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Our New Podcast Drops Friday — Hear the Teaser Now

We've been telling you for weeks: it's time federal employees had a show of their own. Civil Rights for Civil Servants, co-hosted by Shaun Southworth and Lydia Taylor, premieres this Friday, June 19. The teaser is live now — give it a listen and subscribe so episode one lands in your feed the moment it drops.

Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/civil-rights-for-civil-servants/id1896934934

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033zBy75aQ3K3M7732eFSW

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d0363d85-a5df-434a-9b0e-0335d4258d42/civil-rights-for-civil-servants

Listen to the latest episode of Civil Rights for Civil Servants They kept a file on you. It's time you kept one on them. For the last year and a half, federal employees have lived through hiring freeze... player.captivate.fm

Today at a Glance

• Federal Hiring: After more than a year of downsizing, OPM is leaning on familiar recruiting tools — college job sites, multi-agency shared certificates, and tech programs — even as its flagship Tech Force has onboarded only 10 of a planned 1,000 hires.

• Defense Bargaining: As the fiscal 2027 defense bill moves forward, lawmakers and AFGE are again pushing to undo the order that stripped most Defense Department civilians of collective bargaining — the same fix the Senate dropped last year.

• Retirement Pitfalls: Unpaid service deposits and OPM processing delays remain the two most common ways a federal retirement application gets derailed; both are avoidable with early action.

Top Stories:

1. After a Year of Downsizing, OPM Turns to Recruiting — Same Playbook, Slow Results

Source: Government Executive, June 9, 2026

TL;DR: After roughly a year and a half of workforce reductions that erased the staffing gains made under the prior administration, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor used a June 9 event to lay out how the government plans to bring people back in. Several of his ideas mirror approaches the Biden administration used: recruiting on Handshake, a job-networking site popular with college students; using "shared certificates," which let multiple agencies hire from a single job announcement; and tech-focused hiring programs. Kupor said the government should stop marketing federal work as a 40-year career, arguing that younger workers no longer think in those terms. He also promoted Tech Force, launched at the end of 2025 to bring in early-career software and data engineers. OPM set a goal of 1,000 Tech Force hires by March, but officials said on May 28 that they had made 180 to 200 tentative hires and onboarded only 10 people. Workforce experts have noted that job stability — not pay — has historically been a top reason early-career applicants choose government.

For federal employees, this means:

•  If you are job-hunting across agencies, "shared certificates" mean one rejection need not end your consideration elsewhere — register your interests so qualifying announcements can reach you.
• Employees who were separated or displaced retain selection priority for many competitive-service vacancies through CTAP/ICTAP (Career and Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plans); confirm your eligibility window before it lapses.
• Re-entry through Tech Force or similar term and early-career programs is possible, but onboarding has been slow, so do not assume a quick start date.

Legal Insight:
Federal recruitment and selection are governed by the merit system principles, which require recruiting from qualified sources and selecting solely on the basis of merit (5 U.S.C. § 2301). Shared certificates rest on competitive-examining authority and the Competitive Service Act amendments that let an agency share a certificate of eligibles with another agency (5 U.S.C. § 3318(b)(2)). Displaced and surplus federal employees have selection priority under CTAP/ICTAP (5 C.F.R. Part 330, Subparts F and G); if you believe you were passed over despite valid CTAP/ICTAP eligibility, that is a procedural right worth raising promptly, and a federal employment attorney can help you assess it.

2. Lawmakers Move Again to Restore Defense Civilians' Bargaining Rights in the Annual Defense Bill

Source: Government Executive, June 9, 2026

TL;DR: The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is renewing its push for Congress to roll back Executive Order 14251 as the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) advances. EO 14251, signed March 27, 2025, excluded most Defense Department civilian employees — part of roughly one million federal workers across some 40 agencies — from collective bargaining on national-security grounds. The House Armed Services Committee approved its version of the fiscal 2027 NDAA and adopted an amendment from Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), by a 30-26 vote, that would bar the Defense Department from using funds to implement the order; several Republicans crossed over to support it. The House passed a similar provision in last year's defense bill, but it was removed during negotiations with the Senate. The provision now travels with the broader NDAA as the Senate works on its own version. Separately, EO 14251 remains in litigation, and the Defense Department moved earlier this year to terminate its AFGE contracts.

For federal employees, this means:

•  If you are a Defense Department civilian, whether your bargaining unit and contract survive may depend on whether this NDAA language makes it through conference — last year, it did not.

• Grievance, arbitration, and union-representation rights generally flow from a collective bargaining agreement; if a contract is terminated, those avenues can narrow even while court challenges continue.

• Two separate tracks are in play — the NDAA in Congress and the EO 14251 court case — and they can produce different outcomes, so watch both.

Legal Insight:
The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (5 U.S.C. Chapter 71) is the source of most federal employees' collective bargaining rights. Section 7103(b)(1) allows the President to exclude an agency or subdivision from coverage when its primary function is intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national-security work and the statute cannot be applied in a way consistent with national-security requirements. EO 14251 invokes that authority on an unusually broad scale; the central legal question is whether it reaches employees and components with no genuine national-security mission.

3. Two Things That Most Often Derail a Federal Retirement Application

Source: FedSmith.com, June 15, 2026

TL;DR: A June 15 FedSmith analysis highlights two recurring problems that delay or reduce federal annuities: unpaid service deposits and OPM processing time. A "service deposit" is the payment needed to get credit for certain periods of service — most commonly military service, or civilian time for which retirement contributions were refunded or never withheld — and it generally must be completed before you separate. Interest accrues if the deposit is not paid within the early grace period, so waiting is costly. On processing, OPM typically places new retirees in "interim pay" — estimated payments often running about 60% to 80% of the final annuity — within roughly two to four weeks of receiving a complete case. Average processing in fiscal 2026 has run about 46 days for digital Online Retirement Application claims and 73 days for all claims, with May higher (about 66 days digital and 87 days paper). Complex cases — court orders, special annuity computations, workers' compensation history, service at multiple agencies, or missing documents — take longer. OPM has processed a record 119,451 claims in the first eight months of fiscal 2026.

For federal employees, this means:

• Request a service-credit deposit estimate now (SF 3108 for FERS, SF 2803 for CSRS); the deposit generally must be paid before you separate, and interest grows the longer you wait.

• Plan for a cash gap at retirement: interim pay is usually only 60% to 80% of your final annuity, and complex cases can run well past the published averages.

• Keep clean copies of your SF-50s and any beneficiary or court-order documents; missing or inconsistent records are a leading cause of delay.

Legal Insight:
Creditable service and the deposits required to count it are governed by FERS (5 U.S.C. §§ 8411, 8422) and CSRS (5 U.S.C. § 8334); paying a required deposit or redeposit can restore service that would otherwise not count toward your eligibility or annuity amount. If OPM miscalculates your creditable service or annuity, you may appeal its final determination to the Merit Systems Protection Board (5 U.S.C. § 8461(e) for FERS; § 8347(d) for CSRS). Because these deadlines and computations are easy to miss and hard to reverse later, a federal employment attorney or qualified retirement counselor is worth consulting before you file.

Legal Tip of the Day

Spotting Retaliation After You Speak Up

Retaliation can happen after an employee files an EEO complaint, requests accommodation, reports misconduct, raises safety concerns, or otherwise asserts workplace rights. It may show up as sudden criticism, exclusion from meetings, changed assignments, a lower rating, or discipline that seems to follow closely after the protected activity. Keep a timeline showing what you reported, when you reported it, who knew, and what changed afterward. Avoid broad accusations without facts, but do not ignore patterns just because each event seems small on its own. Southworth PC can help federal employees assess whether post-complaint treatment may be retaliation and what steps may make sense.

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