Federal Workers Should Be Fireable At-Will, HR Chief Says (1)

Government workers should be “at will” employees who can be fired for any reason, the Trump administration’s chief personnel officer said.

Scott Kupor, director of the White House Office of Personnel Management, said Monday that federal managers should be able to remove low performers with little resistance, even as he acknowledged it would be difficult to implement fully.

“Everybody should be at-will employees, quite frankly,” Kupor said during a wide-ranging discussion with Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Law, and Bloomberg Government. “That’s not going to happen, and I know that’s not going to happen, but I think we need to get closer to the point where you can actually, you know, kind of pay for performance and you can manage out people.”

Kupor’s remarks came as the Trump administration continues to erode civil servant protections, weaken federal-sector unions, and cut the workforce.

Kupor, who was sworn in July 15 after receiving Senate confirmation, has issued directives that shift staff oversight to political appointees and give employees leeway to voice their religious beliefs in the workplace.

He said he’s focused on new incentives to attract talent, and rebuffed critics who say Trump is demanding loyalty from nonpartisan federal workers.

“It’s totally reasonable to not have people in those positions who are trying to, you know, thwart the goals that the president has been elected to do,” Kupor said. “It’s the most democratic process there is.”

Kupor distanced himself from Elon Musk, once the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency, but said OPM would work to make permanent some of the cuts to government spending spurred by DOGE.

“I have literally spoken to him, like, once in my life,” he said of Musk. “DOGE did a lot of great things to kind of help catalyze a conversation around operational efficiency in government. I view our job now as how we institutionalize those things, and there’s no reason for me to consult Elon on those things.”

Kupor credited DOGE for breaking down barriers to federal hiring, pointing to 19-year-old employee Edward Coristine, known by his online alias “Big Balls,” as someone who would have been wrongly disqualified from federal service for not having a college degree.

“We should not care about whether someone has a college degree,” Kupor said. “We should actually evaluate do they have skills that are needed for this job.”

Kupor also expressed a desire to rework the federal retirement system to expand where plans can make investments. He acknowledged he wouldn’t be able to pursue that without buy-in from the Treasury Department and Congress, however.

“Every other agency has a sovereign wealth fund where they have professional money managers who actually manage their retirement assets on behalf of the population,” he said.