The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is set to introduce a new rule allowing agencies to prioritise performance over tenure and length of service in layoffs, or reductions-in-force (RIF). The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 government workers, argues this would undermine seniority protections and give agency leaders more discretion over who stays and who goes. The rule would deemphasize tenure and put more emphasis on performance ratings when determining who's excluded from layoffs. It would also exclude more job categories from layoff protections, thereby widening the pool of workers who could be cut. However, a former human-resources official suggests that the rule could result in more subjective decisions about who gets laid off.