Federal Civil Service System Begins to Fade Away

[MORTARDUDE]

Civil Service System Begins to Fade Away

The Washington Post

November 09, 2003, Sunday, Final Edition

Stephen Barr


The civil service system is breaking up.

House and Senate negotiators announced an agreement Friday that would permit the Pentagon to overhaul the pay and personnel rules for 746,000 civil service employees of the Defense Department.

That agreement -- when combined with last year's decision to allow the Department of Homeland Security to rewrite pay and workplace rules for its 180,000 employees -- means that more than half the federal workforce will no longer be anchored by civil service law.

The House-Senate agreement effectively ends the reign of the 1949 Classification Act, which created the General Schedule and the existing framework for setting pay and evaluating federal employees. The House-Senate agreement also sidelines important parts of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

"This is about dropping old thinking, old rules, old relationships," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who helped negotiate the agreement.

What all of this means for federal employees is unclear.

Bush administration officials, including Defense appointees, appear eager to move employees into systems that more closely link pay raises -- both the timing and the amount -- to individual job performance. Some employees say they welcome a shift to performance-based pay because they are confident they can win higher raises.

Many employees, however, like the current, more predictable system and the idea that Congress gives employees an annual across-the-board raise. They are concerned that Congress will not provide adequate funding to make new systems work and that giving managers more discretion over pay will only increase cronyism and favoritism.

Although no timetables have been laid out, it seems likely that Defense and Homeland Security employees will start making the transition to new pay systems in the next few months.

The agreement to allow civil service changes at Defense is included in the fiscal 2004 bill that authorizes defense programs and weapons purchases. The House approved the bill Friday, and the Senate plans to approve the bill in the coming week. It would then go to the president.

In addition to changing pay and job classifications, the bill would streamline the disciplinary process by allowing the Pentagon to set up an in-house panel to hear appeals. Employees being fired or suspended still could take their cases to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency.

The agreement also would permit the Pentagon to redefine union negotiations and how labor disputes are resolved.

House Democrats fear that federal employees will lose out on pay and job protections under a new system. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) said: "This bill is a jab and mark of disrespect for our civilian employees. . . . There is no reason for this to have happened." Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said the agreement "goes too far" and is filled with "egregious provisions."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld began the push to change the department's personnel rules in the spring. The effort quickly became controversial.

House Republicans reshaped parts of the proposal. Then Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), joined by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), offered an alternate plan that put more emphasis on employee appeal rights and union participation in designing a new Defense personnel system.

"One reason I felt so strongly is that the secretary's proposal . . . is likely to be a template for future reforms of the civil service system," Collins said. She said she fought to make sure "that the secretary would not have unilateral authority to waive all personnel rules and laws."

Still, Rumsfeld won much of what he sought. His victory seems to raise the question of whether a uniform civil service system can survive if other agencies decide that they want to create their own pay and personnel systems.

"This now becomes an issue of 'No Agency Left Behind,' " said John Palguta, a vice president at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. "What do we do for the Department of Justice? The Centers for Disease Control?"


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