There
is a revolt in the ranks of the federal bureaucracy and, for a change,
it could help good management rather than frustrate it. From the highest
levels of the Clinton Cabinet to the average government worker, resistance
is rising to an Al Gore "reinventing government" initiative that would
turn government management over to its unions. It is about time.
Back in 1993, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order recommended
by his Vice President to create "management councils" with expanded
governing power. For the first time, management authority would be divided
between executive and union officials and these would be given the new
power to bargain (with unions!) over management issues like the number
of people, the type of resources needed and the skills needed to perform
federal responsibilities. Previous Democratic and Republican administrations
had generally refused to even discuss these inherently executive matters
with unions, to say nothing of the conflict of interest involved in
having union representatives on both sides of the bargaining table.
But Mr. Clinton wanted to gain political points with the unions, so
he gave them what they wanted.
Six years later, the order lies in shreds. Most federal agencies have
ignored the order and others have created councils without utilizing
them to a very great degree. So, the union bosses pressured Gore’s reinvention
team to prepare for his signature a memorandum instructing agency heads
to sign a pledge that they will implement the order. Needing union support
for his bid to become President and recognizing that public sector unions
are the only growing sector of the movement, Mr. Gore was pleased to
comply. But at the last meeting of the President’s Management Council,
consisting of the top political executives in the departments and major
agencies of the government, there was what one participant described
as "a revolt in the ranks" against the memo. The leaders of the departments
of Defense, Justice and Treasury balked and were generally supported
by the rest. Fortunately, even within the Clinton Administration, top
executives recognize that if the order was fully implemented, the unions
could impede or even bring work to a complete stop. Even those who might
have dodged the draft recognized that a hobbled Department of Defense
was not a good idea when the Administration was considering sending
troops to Kosovo to join those in Bosnia and those in the Iraq theater.
In a little-noticed decision last summer, the Federal Labor Relations
Authority courageously held that failure to bargain upon the items in
the Clinton order did not amount to an unfair labor practice, frustrating
the union’s most direct route to enforce it. While it did not have the
authority to question the existence of the councils, FLRA did refuse
to make the order binding upon management but considered it only guidance.
This led the unions to Vice President and top government "reinventor"
Al Gore and to the present impasse. Both the Senior Executive Association
and the Federal Managers Association have lined up to oppose the new
memo.
If the Clinton order were enforced, management could not establish the
number of positions it deems necessary, identify the skills required,
classify a position at the appropriate grade level, determine which
organizational unit performs a task, establish the hours of duty for
a position, or determine what equipment and tools are needed, in what
order the work is performed, and how many personnel will be involved
without consulting the union. In one agency, a career executive in charge
of 3,000 inspectors and clerks tried to move from Windows 3.1 to Windows
95 but was blocked by the union, which finally filed an unfair labor
practice which tied up action so long the simple change was never made.
At the Federal Aviation Administration, the union claimed that the serious
matter of where to assign 300 new inspectors was bargainable, threatening
to delay a serious matter of safety which was resolved only because
management acted in spite of the union threat. If the Clinton order
were in effect, air safety could have been substantially endangered.
Indeed, the whole government could be smothered by a mass of union grievance
complaints.
Career and political executives have also been frustrated by the explosion
of equal employment complaints under the Clinton Administration. In
1993, it had supported legislation to grant attorney’s fees and compensatory
damages up to $300,000 for prevailing in discrimination cases. Needless
to say, with this incentive for attorneys (after the unions, the second
highest contributors to Clinton, Gore and the Democrats), complaints
exploded--according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
from 19,108 in 1992 to 27,587 in 1997--at a time no one believes discrimination
was increasing in the Federal Government. If the payments were for valid
claims, the payments might be defensible but the General Accounting
Office found that the percentage of cases where discrimination was found
declined from 13.0% in 1992 to 9.9% in 1997. As the lead attorney for
the Senior Executive Association said at a recent conference, "The complaint
itself is the penalty." The time and resources involved are so large
that even frivolous cases are often settled (5,830 cases were settled
in 1996) to pay the lawyers.
In such a red-tape management environment, it is difficult to do the
people’s business. It is time for Congress to act. The legislative branch
should hold hearings on both the Clinton Order gifting unions and the
equal employment bounty payments for lawyers. A new chairman has been
appointed to the House subcommittee on civil service. Perhaps Representative
Joe Scarborough will investigate both of these matters. If so, he will
find a great degree of support from career managers and even among the
Clinton political leadership.
Donald
Devine, former director Of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management,
is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant and a Vice Chairman
for the American Conservative Union.
