Fed Senior Level (SL) Positions

[Anonymous]

I have looked at the OPM information on SL positions and shave a basic question about job protections. Obviously an SL position is career, not political. But hypothetically, if a principal is fired during a change in administration, are his SL advisers likely to be fired as well? Are there protections? Are these types of positions likely to be reclassified as Schedule F?

[Anonymous]

No. You have no protections in SL or SES positions

[Anonymous]

Are the protections lower than a GS-15 excepted service job?

[Anonymous]

Career SES who are in the competitive civil service have to sign a relocation/reassignment waiver upon entering the SES. This permits the government to move the SES to a different position and/or to a different part of the civil service (e.g., from a job at DoE to a job with DoJ at a different city/state) at will, without any appeal rights from the employee.

A career SES cannot be fired solely due to a change in administration, but they can be reassigned to an entirely different job elsewhere in the government (at the same SES level).

SL and ST rules are slightly different from SES, and also not identical to GS in the Competitive Civil Service.

GS-anything in the Excepted Civil Service do not have ANY protections arising from the Civil Service Act, but Excepted Service also does not have the lower pay caps of the Competitive Civil Service. Generally, and exceptions will exist, the GS Excepted Service positions are at-will employees and can be terminated without cause at any time.

The detailed differences among these different types of position can be non-obvious and complex. Even the HR people at many agencies do not understand all of the details for all of these. I would suggest digging into the OPM website for more details.

[Anonymous]

In practice, many SES employees in the metro DC area hold jobs at the same agency/office for their entire SES careers. There is no guarantee of this, and some agencies or cabinet departments like to shuffle the SES assignments more often than others.

DiSA, for example, seems to reorg itself roughly every 4 years, and the details of the SES positions and assignments often vary when the reorg happens. ARL, by contrast, seems to keep its SES and ST people in identical assignments for many years without making significant changes.