WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Washington Post) — The Pentagon removed key protections for defense civilian workers and directed that managers move with “speed and conviction” to fire employees with “unacceptable” performance reviews last month, just a day before the government shut down.
The new guidelines were outlined in a Sept. 30 memo titled “Separation of Employees with Unacceptable Performance” that’s been circulating through the Defense Department in the last week, spurring concern among the workforce.
The move is seen by some managers as necessary to get rid of underperforming employees. Others caution that the edict, signed by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata, the Pentagon’s top personnel policy officer, is so broad it could be used to fire anyone who doesn’t rubber stamp the administration’s programs.
“Looks like we are all ‘at will’ employees now,” one defense civilian said, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
Almost half of the defense civilian workforce is furloughed during the ongoing partial government shutdown. The Trump administration tried earlier this month to fire thousands of furloughed employees, but the move was stopped by a California federal court that found the cuts while the government was closed were likely illegal.
“The Department is in the process of adapting to the new guidance outlined in Under Secretary of War Tata’s memo from September 30th and we have nothing specific to share at this time,” the Pentagon said in a statement to The Washington Post, using their preferred nomenclature for the department.
The civilian firings are part of a larger effort by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that aims to get rid of the “debris” he claims is obstructing his mission to deliver on President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies. Personnel is policy,” Hegseth said last month during a speech to hundreds of generals at Marine Corps Base Quantico.
The memo broadly makes it much easier for managers to fire government civilians working for the military. It also warns that managers will be held accountable if they don’t address “poor employee performance.”
One defense civilian said that based on their understanding of the guidelines, the new rules introduce additional subjectivity into job performance evaluation. In the memo, managers are advised to cite the Douglas Factors — criteria used in federal job evaluations — but each factor in the Tata memo has added language that could dilute some of those considerations. For example, under the Douglas Factor that involves an employee’s roles and responsibilities, the Tata memo notes that “every DoW position supports the mission, so deficiencies in any role can warrant strong action.”
Managers previously had to provide employees with detailed feedback and specific objectives on how poor-performing employees could improve their job performance. In the new policy, those plans for improvement are not required. Targeted employees instead have just seven days to challenge their review.
Employment attorneys cautioned that this memo streamlines the standard process of checks and balances within the department, making it much easier to fire those who are in the way.
“They are gutting federal employee protections significantly,” said Sean Timmons, a managing partner specialized in federal employment and military law at the firm Tully Rinckey.
During his first term, Trump was frequently frustrated by procedural delays in government agency policymaking — which long has been a feature, not a bug, of the Pentagon and other federal agencies to slow potentially destabilizing change. In his second term, Trump has removed many of those guardrails with virtually no protest from the Republican-led Senate nor House of Representatives.
The Pentagon has already cut almost 8 percent of its workforce, or about 60,000 personnel, as was directed by Hegseth earlier this year through voluntary buyouts and attrition, Timmons said. The looser employment protections will likely increase that number, he said.
“They’re trying to use any excuse they can to get rid of people who are not with the program,” Timmons said.
Another defense official welcomed the changes — as long as they are applied ethically — because of how difficult it has been to fire poor-performing federal employees. In previous years, you would take that employee “and just stick them in the corner,” the official said. “And then they’d file an IG complaint on you.”
