Administration Seeks Overhaul of Federal Workforce

So far, the Bush administration had done a lot of things that I never thought they'd be able to get away with. Let's make a list:

• Tax cuts that are supposed to help the economy, but instead will bankrupt this country. Sunset provisions that are shams, and will never come into play. These cuts apply most to the very very wealthy, and only after they are passed does Congress realize that the cuts don't include the working poor who would spend the money and stimulate the economy.
  
• A war in a country because we claimed they had nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. None has been found. Trailers used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons were found, and misidentified as biological production vehicles.
  
• Disregard for the environment, drilling for oil in ecologically sensitive wildlife preserves, eliminating requirements on utilities to come into compliance with the Clean Air Act when refitting old plants, so that they can increase production and pollution on these "grandfathered" plants.
  
• Attempting a stealth attack on the 40 hour workweek, by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act in the deceptively named "Family Time Flexibility Act". (I'll talk more about this one later).
  
• Continued deregulation of media ownership and telecommunications.
  

I have been surprised by how much the Bush Administration has gotten away with, by waving the magic wand and saying "national security". This one, though, will be a real stinker. They are wanting to overhaul the Federal Civil Service system of employment, replacing it with something they claim will be more responsive and efficient.

I'm suspicious. There is a reason the Civil Service system is set up the way it is, to protect professional Federal employees from political forces and poor management. When you start "reforming" [1] the civil service, one of the key issues to address is how these "reforms" will affect protections from abuse by political administrations and management.

The article in the Washington Post today mentions several changes the administration wants. One change that they are seeking is to streamline the disciplinary appeals process, so that, "Rather than take their claims to the Merit Systems Protection Board, workers would have to go through a faster internal appeals process devised by their agency." In other words, if someone in the agency is fired, the appeal would be heard by people appointed by the person who fired him. This doesn't sound impartial at all. It's not quite as vicious as the private sector, where under the bizarrely named "Right to work" or "At will employment" laws a person can be fired for any reason, any time. But having an internal board is just window dressing to make it palatable, and does not get to the root of protecting employees from partisan political actions.

Another change:
Defense employees could no longer count on the guaranteed annual pay raise that many federal workers hold sacred. Officials would implement pay-for-performance systems in which compensation would be tied to annual job evaluations, with poor performers getting little or no raise, or perhaps even a pay cut. The General Schedule, the current 15-grade pay system, would be replaced by more general pay ranges in a system known as pay banding.
This is fine as far as it goes. But by abandoning the graded pay system, we get away from the ideal of "Equal pay for equal work". How else can we guarantee equal pay for the equal work, regardless of sex, race, or political affiliation? How will raises be evaluated? What safeguards are in place to prevent raises from being based on internal agency politics or partisan needs instead of the hard work that the administration claims will be the standard? Again, these questions haven't been answered.

"Also mentioned as significant possible changes at Defense and other agencies are more latitude in offering bonuses and other incentives in recruiting top talent, and the ability to hire job applicants 'on the spot' -- or at least more quickly than the five months or so the current process requires." This will allow hiring of political cronies into top government positions. When this administration came into power, it made a small stink over the number of former administration political appointees who had "burrowed in", or shifted from political appointments to career civil service appointments. This will make that process easier, not harder. How will we make this a competitive process, where all qualified candidates are considered, and the top qualified candidate is the one selected? This has not been addressed either.

The Bush administration has a professed low opinion of the Federal workforce. It is fashionable to bash upon "gummint" employees, for whatever reasons. Hell, I used to do the same, before coming to Washington, DC, seeing how hard they work, and later joining the Federal workforce myself. You would think that rather than bashing it in public, the administration would be praising it for its hard work. After all, the administration controls the employees, not the other way around. And if the Administration is unhappy with the Federal workforce, why doesn't it try to work out changes, instead of bashing? Because if it bashes it enough, then it will be easier to pass sweeping changes through Congress, destroying protections for the Federal workforce, just like it has tried to do with the environment. The big difference is that Federal workers aren't as cute as caribou, and aren't as endangered, yet.

(As an aside, do you think that federal employees are fairly compensated? I do, generally. Pay is about the same, maybe a touch higher than in the private sector, but not much, and not always. The retirement plan is about the same as you'd get in the private sector, similar to a 401(k) with 5 choices, 2 bond funds and 3 stock funds. Health insurance is more expensive than I used to pay in the private sector. Although it has more options for employees, the employee shoulders more of the burden [I think it's around 25%, which is more than the 15% I used to pay in the private sector.] We get a few other holidays, Veterans Day, Columbus Day, and President's Day, but we don't get some, like the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. The job security is a benefit that the private sector doesn't have. If they eliminate that, then the federal workforce will have no draw for people, and actually will have a negative impact on the perceived future value of federal employment.)

Yes, the bureaucracy can be a straightjacket, and some people are drawing paychecks without doing enough work to justify their existence. From my experience, it's the same in any large organization, public, private, for-profit, non-profit. There are Byzantine rules, indecipherable pieces of paper which must be filled out in the proper way, and officious pains in the ass who make it difficult to order supplies and reserve conference rooms. The key difference is that, in addition to office politics and insane requests from the front office, the Federal workforce can have political pressures brought to bear on it. And this administration has shown that it wants to politicize all other forums, so why not the federal workforce as well.

Instead of bashing and posturing, let's have an honest, responsible discussion of the role of the Civil Service and it's reform. If done right, it would take a little time, but would get at least 75% of the Federal workforce behind it, and probably about the same number of the general public. They don't like the slackers, and would love pay for performance. If it were truly pay for performance, and not a fig leaf for cost-cutting and rewarding political cronies. Trouble is, this administration is adverse to honest discussion, preferring misdirection and misinformation; fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

-----
[1] Daniel Davies, D-Squared Digest, has a good definition for "reforms" (including the scare-quotes):

Another lexicographical note; when I use the word "reform" here, I mean it in its normal sense, the sense in which advocates of reform throughout the ages have used it. In other words, I am using "reform" as shorthand for "a disgraceful attack on the common man by those better off than himself, which is made to look less disgraceful by lying about it".