United States President Donald Trump has said his administration is set to change the employment classifications of many federal workers.
In a post on social media on Friday, Trump said moving forward, career government employees who work on policy matters will be classified as “schedule policy/career.”
He expressed the view that the change would ensure that the federal government will finally be run like a business.
The president’s announcement, putting into action an executive order he signed on his first day in office on January 20, will likely strip vast numbers of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce of their job protections by effectively making them employees at will.
No fewer than 260,000 federal workers were said to have been fired, to have taken buyouts, to have retired early, or to have been earmarked for termination since Trump took office.
The reclassification comes as Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency continue their drive to reduce the size and cost of the federal workforce.
Meanwhile, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the biggest federal workers’ union with 800,000 members, Everett Kelley, has expressed dissatisfaction with the move by Trump.
