“The senior executive service is super political and that’s like cabinet members and the deputy to the general counsel. Those are the ones that have absolutely no job protection and the competitive service has all the job protections and includes almost all federal jobs. That was put in place over a hundred years ago. They were trying to get rid of cronyism that really started in the Andrew Jackson era.”

During that era the assumption that ‘to the victor goes the spoils’ would put only loyalists in government and there would be a lot of corruption, explains Lofaso, a former attorney for the National Labor Review Board.  She adds that former President Teddy Roosevelt felt it was really important to have civil servants in government.

“Obviously, everyone has their politics as citizens, but as government employees they would just serve whoever the administration is and they would be the experts,” says Lofaso. “They are the ones that have to take the civil service exams and they are the ones who are the vast majority of employees for the federal government.  The excepted service employees are just exceptions to the competitive service, where it doesn’t make sense to give them a civil service exam.

“The assumption is that everyone in the government is in competitive service unless there is an exception or you are a political appointee,” says Lofaso. “The political appointees are the very top people and they have no job security and can be fired when a new administration comes in.

“The Schedule F is a way of reclassifying competitive service employees so they no longer have any job security. The administration feels they need to do this because it is hard to fire people and they have made a case that they need to be able to fire people because people aren’t doing their jobs well.”

She says the president does have power to make changes in classifications where they are necessary for good administration.

“You have to have a balance between implementing policy and stability of the government and so the civil service is basically running the government and there are a few people that are the boss and they are implementing policy,” says Lofaso.

Lofaso teaches courses in labor law, employment law and constitutional law.

Listen to the full interview on the podcast Bloomberg Law online.

Featured top image of the White House is courtesy of Istock.