For as long as anybody now working in a federal personnel office has been alive, the reduction-in-force (RIF) retention register has been built on four factors in a fixed order: tenure, veterans’ preference, length of service, performance. Veterans’ preference in a RIF put a preference eligible above a non-preference eligible in the same tenure group, and that was the end of the discussion, and the man who spent four years in the infantry before he ever took a civil-service exam carried that service with him onto the register as a kind of standing.
That order is now changed for every RIF notice issued on or after September 2, 2026 (91 FR at 49207). On August 3, 2026, the Office of Personnel Management published a final rule rewriting subparts B through H of 5 CFR part 351, taking effect on September 2, 2026, and it puts performance first and converts veterans’ preference in a RIF into a points bonus applied on top of a performance score (Reduction in Force, OPM–2025–0107, RIN 3206–AO86, 91 FR 49178).
16 numbered changes are described in the preamble, and four of them will decide who stays and who goes.
Post two of four in a series on the Office of Personnel Management’s August 3, 2026, final rules and what they do to federal civilian employees, at home and overseas.
Veterans’ Preference in a RIF: The New Arithmetic at a Glance
Performance Credit:
Each of your three most recent ratings of record is worth seven points at Level 5 (Outstanding), five points at Level 4 (Exceeds Fully Successful), three points at Level 3 (Fully Successful), and zero points at Level 2 or Level 1. Maximum twenty-one.
Preference Credit:
Five points for a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30% or more (Subgroup AD), three for any other preference eligible (Subgroup A), zero for a non-preference eligible (Subgroup B).
Tie-breakers Only:
Tenure subgroup and service date are reached only when two employees carry the identical augmented score.
Effective Date:
September 2, 2026, under the final rule published August 3, 2026 at 91 FR 49178.
Change One: Performance Comes First on the RIF Retention Register
The new section 351.501 tells an agency to classify competing employees “by tenure group,” and then, within each tenure group, “by performance credit in descending order as determined in § 351.503, as augmented by veterans’ preference as described in § 351.504” (91 FR at 49220). Tenure subgroup and service date drop to tie-breakers, used only when two employees carry the identical augmented score.
Performance credit is arithmetic – nothing more than that. Under section 351.503(a)(1) an agency takes each rating of record and assigns points (91 FR at 49220):
Seven points
Five points
Three points
Zero
Then it sums them. The three most recent ratings of record from the four-year period before the RIF notices, or before an agency-established cutoff date, are the ones that count (91 FR at 49197, 49220–22).
So a perfect record is 21 points, and three Fully Successful ratings – which is what most of the federal workforce receives – is nine. Hold that second number in your head, because everything else in this rule is measured against it.
Change Two: Veterans’ Preference in a RIF Becomes Five Points, or Three
Section 351.504(a) assigns preference points by subgroup (91 FR at 49222):
Five points, for a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30% or more.
Three points, for every other preference eligible.
Zero, for a non-preference eligible.
When RIF Veterans’ Preference Wins, and When It Loses
Work the arithmetic on a real pairing, because the abstraction hides what happened.
- A disabled veteran with three Fully Successful ratings scores nine plus five, which is 14.
- A non-veteran with three Outstanding ratings scores 21.
The non-veteran stays, and the disabled veteran is released, and no tie-breaker is ever reached, because the scores are not tied.
Run it the other way, though, and the picture changes. That same disabled veteran with two Outstanding ratings and one Exceeds scores 19 plus five, or 24, and now he outranks the 21. Preference still does work. It does a bounded amount of work – and the boundary is roughly one rating level.
Whether the New Points Rule Is Neutral as to Veterans
I am a 100% combat-related disabled veteran, medically retired, and I began my own service enlisted before I was ever commissioned, so let me be careful about the temptation here. The old rule was not a merit system, and defenders of the change are right that it allowed a poor performer with a DD-214 to displace a strong performer without one. That was a real cost, borne by real coworkers in the same office, and I have been hearing about it from supervisors for 20 years, and I have never had a good answer for them.
What I will not accept is the framing that the change is neutral as to veterans. Veterans’ preference in a RIF has been converted from a category into a coefficient, and the size of that coefficient decides everything, and OPM chose a number that a single rating level can beat.
Change Three: Probationers and Short Appointments Leave the RIF Retention Register
New section 351.202(d) says that an employee holding certain appointments “is not a ‘competing employee’ for purposes of a reduction in force” (91 FR at 49218).
Which Appointments Are No Longer Competing Employees
The list covers (id.):
| Service | Appointment excluded from the register |
|---|---|
| Excepted service | Temporary or time-limited appointments of one year or less |
| Employee serving a trial period | |
| Schedule C | |
| Schedule G | |
| Competitive service | Employee on an indefinite appointment serving an initial probationary period |
| Career-conditional employee serving an initial probationary period | |
| Temporary appointment of one year or less under subpart D of part 316 |
The Consequences for Probationers and Career Employees
The consequence sits in subsection (d)(3), and it is blunt. An agency “may retain such an employee while releasing a competing employee,” and may furlough, separate, demote or reassign that employee without determining retention standing, without applying the order of release, and without providing assignment rights (id.).
Read the first half of that sentence again, because it cuts in a direction most commentary has missed – a probationer is not protected by the register and is also not constrained by it, which means an agency conducting a RIF may keep the six-month hire and release the 18-year GS-12. Whether that is a scandal or a management tool depends on where you are standing. Both readings are available on the text.
What Notice a Non-Competing Employee Still Gets
Subsection (d)(4) preserves a written notice under section 351.801 where the action is not merely a time-limited appointment expiring on its own terms, and the notice must state that the employee was not a competing employee and was not ranked (91 FR at 49218). It does not have to include the register data at section 351.802(a)(2) (id.). You get told that you were never in the competition, and you do not get told who was.
Change Four: RIF Bump and Retreat Is Gone
The old assignment-rights machinery let a released employee “bump” an employee in a lower tenure group and “retreat” to a position he or she formerly held, and both of those are now abolished.
Which Rating Level You Need to Get an Offer at All
New section 351.701(a) requires the agency to offer assignment rather than separation to a competitive service tenure group employee who holds a current annual rating of record at Level 2 (Minimally Satisfactory) or higher, in the same competitive area and the same type of work schedule, and only if the employee is qualified for the position under the assessment criteria in sections 351.702 and 351.703 (91 FR at 49225).
How Far Down an Offer Can Reach, and Where Veterans’ Preference in a RIF Adds Grades
Under subsection (b) the assignment must be to a position held by another employee “with lower retention standing in the same tenure group,” not more than three grades below the released position, except that a preference eligible with a compensable disability of 30% or more gets five grades (id.).
In ordinary terms, your landing zone is now three grades deep instead of open-ended; it has to be inside the same competitive area, and it has to be a job held by somebody who scored below you on the same register. Cross-tenure displacement is over. If you carry a Level 1 rating, you have no assignment right at all, because the new OPM RIF rules condition the entire entitlement on a Level 2 or better.
Sidebar: The RIF Retention Register Does Not Reach AAFES or NAF Employees
Part 351’s retention register does not reach AAFES, and the arithmetic set out above buys a NAF employee nothing under these rules.
Why NAF Pay Puts You Outside 5 CFR Part 351
Section 2105(c) of title 5 says that an employee paid from nonappropriated funds of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the Navy Ships Stores Program, the Navy exchanges, the Marine Corps exchanges, the Coast Guard exchanges, or another armed-forces instrumentality “conducted for the comfort, pleasure, contentment, and mental and physical improvement of personnel of the armed forces” is “deemed not an employee for the purpose of … laws administered by the Office of Personnel Management” (5 U.S.C. 2105(c), Office of the Law Revision Counsel). Part 351 is a regulation OPM administers, and that single sentence disposes of the whole question before anybody reaches the retention arithmetic.
Which produces a result that looks strange until you understand it. A veteran with a 30% compensable disability working at a NAF child development center picks up no five-point credit under section 351.504, because section 351.504 was never written for him. Veterans’ preference operates in NAF employment through a separate Department of Defense system with its own rules, and those rules are not the ones this post has been describing.
Five exceptions survive the exclusion, and none of them helps here (id.):
- Section 7204
- Anything title 5 specifically provides
- The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
- Interchange agreements for noncompetitive movement into the competitive service
- Subchapter V of chapter 63
The fourth exception is the practical door. A NAF employee who moves into a competitive service position under an interchange agreement crosses the line and starts accruing the service that these rules measure, which is why the timing of such a move matters far more than most people assume when they make it.
What Replaces a RIF for NAF Employees
The NAF counterpart to an OPM reduction in force is DoD Instruction 1400.25, Volume 1417, “Civilian Transition Program (CTP) for Nonappropriated Fund (NAF) Employees Affected by Workforce Reductions,” dated 19 June 2015 (DoDI 1400.25 volume index, Executive Services Directorate).
Two employees can lose a job in the same reorganization, in the same building, on the same day at Grafenwöhr, and be in two different legal systems. Ask which fund pays you. Your Standard Form 50 or your NAF personnel action answers the question, and if it does not, put the question to the servicing personnel office in writing and keep the reply.
What the OPM RIF Rules Preserve
A rule that took this much away also kept some things, and a fair reading of it has to say so plainly.
| Protection | Rule | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| USERRA retention rights | § 351.606(a) | Applied on top of your retention standing; reassignment, not release |
| No downgrade for erosion of duties | § 351.202(c)(3) | No downward reclassification once a RIF is announced |
| Standing frozen at notice | § 351.507 | Fixed on the day you receive the notice |
| Your score arrives with the notice | § 351.802(a)(2)–(3) | The notice must show your ranking data and cite 5 CFR part 351 |
Which Protections Survived the Rewrite
USERRA retention rights survive as a mandatory exception. Section 351.606(a) requires an agency applying section 351.601 or section 351.605 to provide a mandatory exception for each competing employee entitled under section 353.209(b) to retention for six months or one year after restoration, and the agency must determine ordinary retention standing first and then apply the exception on top of it (91 FR at 49223). Under the abolishment provision, that employee must be assigned to a different position at the agency rather than released (id.).
Section 351.202(c)(3) bars an agency from reclassifying a position downward for erosion of duties between the formal announcement of a RIF and its completion where the reclassification would hurt the employee’s retention standing (91 FR at 49218). That is an anti-manipulation rule with teeth in it, and OPM did not have to write it.
Section 351.507 fixes retention standing as of the date the employee receives the specific RIF notice, which stops the register from moving underneath a person during the notice period (91 FR at 49223).
What Your RIF Notice Must Now Tell You
The RIF notice requirements tightened as well. Section 351.802(a)(2) now requires the specific notice to state the employee’s competitive area, competitive level, veterans’ preference subgroup, tenure group and subgroup, service date, and three most recent ratings of record from the last four years, and subsection (a)(3) requires a link to 5 CFR part 351 and information on how to reach the agency’s RIF records (91 FR at 49226).
Whether an Agency Can Add Points Under a Pass/Fail System
Under section 351.503(d) an agency may award additional performance points to employees rated under a pass/fail system, but only in its “sole and exclusive discretion,” and only where it has documented in advance how it will prioritize awards and made those criteria available for review (91 FR at 49220–21).
The Strongest Objection to Demoting Veterans’ Preference in a RIF
The case for this rule is that a retention system that ranks a Minimally Satisfactory preference eligible above an Outstanding non-veteran is not defensible to taxpayers, that it drives capability out of the government during exactly the reorganizations where capability is scarcest, and that Congress guaranteed preference in hiring without guaranteeing that it would override every other consideration for the following 30 years.
That argument is serious, and I do not have a clean answer to it, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I have instead is a narrower objection, and it is about calibration rather than principle.
The veterans’ preference in a RIF is now worth three or five points on a scale where a single rating level is worth two to four. Consider what that makes decisive. Ratings of record are assigned by supervisors; they are not audited by anybody outside the agency, they are known to inflate under pressure, and they are now the primary currency of job security in a RIF. OPM did not pair this change with any independent check on rating integrity, and the rule that makes ratings decisive is silent about what happens when a rating is retaliatory or simply wrong.
That is the seam I would work – not the demotion of preference, which is a policy judgment Congress can revisit whenever it likes, but the elevation of an unaudited supervisory judgment into the position of the deciding variable.
Your RIF Checklist: Six Things to Check This Month
Six things, and every one of them is worth doing this month rather than after a notice lands on your desk.
Score Your Last Three Ratings of Record
Pull your last three ratings of record and score yourself: 7, 5, 3, 0, 0. If a rating is missing from your electronic official personnel folder, you have a problem to fix now rather than during a 60-day notice period.
Add Your Veterans’ Preference Points
Add what veterans’ preference in a RIF is now worth: five points if you are a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30% or more, three points if you are any other preference eligible, zero otherwise. That is your augmented score within the applicable tenure group and competitive level; tie-breakers and statutory exceptions still matter.
Check Your Preference Code on Your Standard Form 50
Confirm your veterans’ preference code is correct on your Standard Form 50 and that your disability rating is documented with the servicing personnel office. The agency identifies you as Subgroup AD, A or B on the retention register from what its own records show (91 FR at 49222), so a disability rating you hold but never documented with the servicing personnel office cannot earn you the extra points.
Count the Positions in Your Organizational Unit
Identify your official organizational unit and count the positions in it, because the competitive area gets decided before your score ever matters.
Do Not Count on the MSPB or a Union Grievance
Do not assume the union grievance route or the Merit Systems Protection Board will be there, and do not assume your RIF appeal rights are what they were last year. Post one in this series covers where RIF appeals now go, and the answer is OPM, on a 30-day clock, with no judicial review.
Challenge a Wrong Rating on Its Own Track
Challenge a wrong rating on its own track and immediately. A performance appraisal grievance, an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, or an Office of Special Counsel filing addressing a retaliatory rating is not a RIF appeal, and each runs under its own procedure and its own deadline (5 CFR part 771; 29 CFR part 1614; 5 U.S.C. 1214, 2302), and under this rule that rating is now the thing that decides whether you keep your job.
The old register asked what you were, and this one asks what your supervisor wrote down about you last spring – and it asks that question first, before it asks anything else.
FAQs
What Does Veterans’ Preference for RIF Mean Under the New Rules?
It no longer means a category that outranks non-veterans. Section 351.504 converts preference into points added on top of your performance score: five points for a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30% or more, three points for any other preference eligible, and zero for a non-preference eligible (91 FR at 49222). Because a single rating level is worth two to four points, preference is now beatable by roughly one rating level.
How Is the RIF Retention Register Built Now?
Section 351.501 has the agency group competing employees by tenure group, then rank them within each tenure group by performance credit in descending order under section 351.503, augmented by veterans’ preference under section 351.504 (91 FR at 49220). Tenure subgroup and service date are tie-breakers only.
When Do the OPM RIF Rules Take Effect?
The final rule was published August 3, 2026 and takes effect September 2, 2026. It rewrites subparts B through H of 5 CFR part 351 and amends parts 316, 330, 351, 353, 359, 362 and 430 (Reduction in Force, OPM–2025–0107, RIN 3206–AO86, 91 FR 49178).
What Are the RIF Notice Requirements?
A specific notice under section 351.802(a)(2) must state your competitive area, competitive level, veterans’ preference subgroup, tenure group and subgroup, service date, and your three most recent ratings of record from the last four years. Subsection (a)(3) requires a link to 5 CFR part 351 and information on how to reach the agency’s RIF records (91 FR at 49226).
Does Any of This Apply to AAFES and Other NAF Employees?
No. Under 5 U.S.C. 2105(c) a nonappropriated fund employee is deemed not an employee for purposes of laws administered by the Office of Personnel Management, and 5 CFR part 351 is one of them. NAF workforce reductions run through a separate Department of Defense system. Ask which fund pays you.
This post is written for general educational purposes and is not legal advice to any person or matter.
