The Workplace of Personnel Administration, which oversees the federal civil service, simply dropped a brand new memo that encourages federal employers to take a “generous approach” to accommodating worker schedules, together with permitting telework. Oh wait. That “generous approach” solely applies to spiritual staff. Everybody else can pound sand.
OPM’s memo is sort of comical in its solicitousness of non secular staff, whereas completely disregarding different federal staff. With a view to accommodate non secular employees, federal businesses are informed to think about a cavalcade of lodging: telework, compensatory time, versatile schedules, annual depart, and time without work for journey. Fairly candy deal! Non secular staff ought to be allowed to telework to accommodate prayer breaks in the course of the workday, as a result of “telework is often a low-cost solution” and “does not impose substantial operational burdens.”
That’s fairly a unique strategy to telework for everybody else within the federal authorities. In distinction to the “generous approach” required for non secular staff, the Trump administration’s stance has been comprehensively hateful to each different federal worker. Trump was so hyped to assault federal staff that he issued an govt order banning telework and demanding federal staff return to in-person work on his very first day in workplace.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth was additionally excited to assault his personal workforce, stating that the Division of Protection would terminate agreements with anybody who teleworked inside 50 miles of their worksite. And simply final week, the Veterans Affairs Division introduced it will make it more durable for employees with disabilities to work remotely, as a result of apparently, the Individuals with Disabilities Act’s necessities for affordable lodging for disabled employees don’t matter.
So, for these conserving rating at residence: letting somebody telework to allow them to pray is not any large deal, low-cost, and never disruptive to the workforce. Letting anybody else telework, even employees with disabilities, is past the pale and proof of worker laziness and presumably even fraud.
Simply peep OPM’s different steering to federal employees, which is generally telling them that they suck. Previous OPM memos embody bangers like “IG Report Reveals Rampant Telework Abuse Under Biden Administration,” which makes positive to remind federal staff that OPM had reinstated in-person work “to restore a culture of accountability and public service.” Or maybe you’d wish to learn “OPM Proposes Rule to Hold Federal Workers Accountable for Misconduct,” which boasts of how the administration will make it simpler to fireplace federal staff as a result of “public service is a privilege, not a right.”
There’s all the time ”OPM Proclaims Advantage Hiring Plan to Restore Accountability to the Federal Workforce,” which talks about the necessity to “rebuild a federal workforce rooted in merit, competence, and dedication to American values.” After which, after all, there’s the entire thing the place the administration has formally fired effectively over 59,000 federal staff, with many extra being compelled out.
Hundreds of federal employees have misplaced their jobs since Trump took workplace in January.
The non secular liberty memo was the primary issued underneath the brand new everlasting OPM director, Scott Kupor. Throughout Kupor’s affirmation listening to, he complained about how the federal authorities at present ranks too many staff as excessive performers. He additionally did some powerful speak about how the federal authorities must make exhausting selections so it doesn’t function at a deficit.
This can be a wholly warped studying of what “religious liberty” requires, however it’s one which the Supreme Courtroom has already blessed. The appropriate-wing majority has repeatedly held that accommodating the beliefs of conservative Christians means eradicating the separation of church and state, establishing a world the place Christians have privileges nobody else does.
Non secular mother and father can block colleges from letting their youngsters learn even essentially the most innocuous LGBTQ+ books, however secular mother and father who need their youngsters to obtain gender-affirming care can not. Firms run by non secular people who find themselves against same-sex marriage can refuse to work with same-sex {couples}. The Supreme Courtroom created a particular carveout to public lodging legal guidelines, which prohibit discrimination by companies that maintain themselves open to the general public. Certain, that’s the legislation, but when your faith opposes same-sex marriage, it’s completely cool in case you refuse to work with same-sex {couples}.
Simply in case OPM didn’t make it scrupulously clear that they intend to offer non secular staff particular remedy, the telework memo says non secular lodging are vital as a result of “it is in the interest of the Federal government to recruit and retain highly-qualified employees of faith.”
That entire separation of church and state factor means the other: that it’s within the curiosity of the federal authorities to be impartial in its recruiting, slightly than recruiting based mostly on the non secular beliefs of a candidate. There’s additionally the entire concern of how, precisely, the federal government plans to find out, in the course of the hiring course of, the non secular beliefs of a candidate. In fact, in a very lawless administration, there is no such thing as a actual barrier to warping the federal hiring course of by brazenly favoring “employees of faith” over non-religious candidates.
Whereas OPM’s memo is perhaps a drop within the bucket within the context of the whole lot else the administration is doing, it’s a deeply pernicious, cynical factor. It units non secular staff aside, tells them how essential they’re and the way their wants should all the time be met—and met in a style that’s prohibited for different federal staff. Certain, the administration is making an attempt to impose Christian nationalism on us all, however you’d suppose they may not less than be a little bit extra refined about it.
