On March 23, FMA joined nearly 25 organizations within the Federal-Postal Coalition (FPC) on a letter to the Biden Administration urging quick action to restore a quorum on the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). The MSPB is the primary forum available to federal employees to enforce their workplace rights. As we have noted recently, FMA has been active in our efforts to restore the MSPB, which has lacked a quorum for four years – since January 2017 – and has not had any Senate-confirmed members since March 2019. In that time, more than 3,000 federal workers have been deprived of an opportunity for justice and an adjudicative hearing before the body, leaving both them and their former agencies in limbo. FMA has been vocal on this issue for years, and again included it as an issue brief in 2021.

The FPC letter said, “Traditionally, the MSPB sustains roughly 85 percent of personnel actions. In these cases, the finality of an MSPB decision provides clarity to agencies regarding their handling of personnel matters. In the 15 percent of cases where the MSPB rules in favor of the employee, the employee often returns to work with back pay. Each day the MSPB operates without a quorum, the back pay agencies will need to provide to reinstated employees grows. Some reports estimate agencies will owe at least $60 million in back pay once final decisions resume. Without a functioning MSPB, thousands of federal employees, including critical federal whistleblowers, are denied justice at a costly expense to taxpayers.”

On February 23, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) introduced the Merit Systems Protection Board Empowerment Act of 2021 (H.R. 1224). The bill reauthorizes the MSPB through 2026. FMA supports this bill, which would also require whistleblower training and allows MSPB to conduct surveys of federal employees to improve operations of the board. FMA also signed a Government Managers Coalition letter in January, recommending four individuals for the Biden administration’s consideration for nomination to the MSPB.