Federal Employee under investigation

[examiner2016]

Good evening. I am a career Federal civilian employee with 6-years of tenure. Over 74-days ago, I was notified by my supervisor an institution I supervise for examinations sent in "a letter" and the allegations are "so serious" the Associate Regional Director placed me immediately on paid administrative leave. At that time, nobody would tell me anything about the allegations. 7-days after being placed on paid administrative leave, I was reassigned to a non-examiner role. To this day I have not been told of the exact allegations.

At some point, am I not entitled to some due process here? Allegations were made by a troubled institution with a history of doing this to field staff; and 10-weeks later nothing from any form of management. When I spoke to my Union representatives, they stated this entire situation is "very odd, and none of us have seen this before".

Is the length of time I have been isolated and told nothing normal?

Thank you for your time regarding my question.

 

[FlyingRon]

There's no "tenure" for civil servants. If you break the law, you can be fired. The due process is spelled out for you at http://www.mspb.gov/. If you can't figure out that basic piece of infomration, you probably need an attorney. I haven't worked for the feds in 30+ years and I knew that.

 

[LdiJ]

There's no "tenure" for civil servants. If you break the law, you can be fired. The due process is spelled out for you at http://www.mspb.gov/. If you can't figure out that basic piece of infomration, you probably need an attorney. I haven't worked for the feds in 30+ years and I knew that.

Simple Definition of tenure

1 : the amount of time that a person holds a job, office, or title


2 : the right to keep a job (especially the job of being a professor at a college or university) for as long as you want to have it


3 law : the right to use property


The OP was using tenure in the bolded sense.

 

[commentator]

What Ron said still holds true. Federal civil service has no tenure in the schoolteacher sort of sense, but there are more structures to their policies and a few more protections and rights than regular private employment, and the OP also has a union. It shouldn't be terribly hard to figure out, or ask for the union legal counsel's assistance to figure out what exactly is going on/has already happened. That said, a discussion with a labor attorney is sometimes appropriate, though since these actions have already taken place, it may be a little after the fact and too late to protest them.

 

[LdiJ]

What Ron said still holds true. Federal civil service has no tenure in the schoolteacher sort of sense, but there are more structures to their policies and a few more protections and rights than regular private employment, and the OP also has a union. It shouldn't be terribly hard to figure out, or ask for the union legal counsel's assistance to figure out what exactly is going on/has already happened. That said, a discussion with a labor attorney is sometimes appropriate, though since these actions have already taken place, it may be a little after the fact and too late to protest them.

I do not disagree. I was just pointing out that the OP was not talking about tenure in the schoolteacher sense and did indeed use the word "tenure" in a grammatically correct way.

 

[FlyingRon]

I understand what he meant. His years of service mean squat as I pointed out. He screws up at any time he can be fired. It is a far cry from decades ago when you had to wait until a civil servant died if you wanted to fire him. Certain misconduct, documented, is all that is required.

The rest of my post is the answer. He needs to avail the procedures at the merit pay board. That is the due process.