Part III: People in Government Organizations

1. Part III: People in Government Organizations Chapter 8: The Civil Service

2. Government Civil Service Systems • Civil service system: employment system used by democratic governments to minimize political tinkering with the administrative process • Employees are • Hired by merit • Paid according to position • Protected from political interference and dismissal • Obligated to accountability

3. Public Employment • Size of American bureaucracy is in the middle of the world’s industrialized nations • Total U.S. government employment at the national level relatively flat in the past forty years • Nearly half of all employees work in education and libraries

4. Fundamental Elements of the Civil Service System • Position classification: each position is identified in terms of the special knowledge the job requires, its level of difficulty, and the responsibilities that come with it. • Staffing • Compensation

5. Position Classification in the Civil Service • Positions are defined according to occupation, degree of difficulty, and responsibility. • General Schedule (GS level) that governs most employees includes fifteen grades. • The system attempts to prevent political interference in the hiring process.

6. Position Classification Problems • Written descriptions rarely match actual jobs • System creates strong incentives for grade creep • Grade creep: tendency for agencies to multiply the number of high administrative positions, shift professional specialists to administrative roles, or seek higher classifications for existing positions • Federal workforce has changed; makes it difficult to keep system up-to-date

7. Staffing the Civil Service • Hiring process asks that applicants who meet minimum qualification requirements for white-collar positions take one of these exams: • Assembled examination: written test administered usually at a number of cities throughout the country; used mostly for lower positions • Unassembled examination: candidate submits comprehensive résumé, detailing education, training, and experience; more common for higher positions (GS-9 and up)

8. Staffing the Civil Service (continued) • Applicants who pass exam are placed on register of individuals for hire • “Rule of three”: the first three names on a ranked register list eligible for hire

9. Staffing Preferences • Veterans receive a five-point bonus in the federal system; if they are disabled they get a ten-point bonus. • Preference over equally qualified white males is given to minorities, women, and disabled applicants. • Those already holding career positions can advance through promotion or transfer without competing against external candidates.

10. Staffing Separations • Average length of service = seventeen years for full-time, permanent, nonpostal employees • Hard to remove mediocre employees

11. Staffing Separations (continued) • Separation by attrition, reductions in force, and buyouts • Reductions in force (RIFs): governments reduce their personnel ceilings to accommodate tight budgets; practiced in early 2000 by state and local governments • Buyouts: government offers cash incentives to employees who agree to leave government employment

12. Compensation in the Civil Service • Federal pay has tended to lag behind what employees would earn in similar private-sector jobs. • Government tends to provide generous fringe benefits. • Civil service principle: individuals should receive equal pay for jobs of comparable value. • Comparable worth: many state governments have conducted these studies and found that sex-based wage differences and sex-based occupational segregation exist in their bureaucracies; some reforms have been based on these results.

13. Employee Rights and Obligations • Unionization: about 40 percent of government employees at the federal, state, and local levels are covered by unions; rise in unionization of public employees • Collective bargaining: used to determine conditions of employment; has increased in the public sector

14. Public-Sector Strikes • Governments do not generally concede the right of their employees to strike against “the sovereign state”; public employees do strike but are limited. • Civil service system and budget decisions by elected policymakers set basic conditions of work. • No executive official can bargain over many of the issues about which the union is concerned. • Government differs in the scope of issues on which employees and their unions want to, or are able to, bargain.

15. Employees’ Right to Privacy • President Reagan (1986) required federal employees to refrain from the use of drugs and declared those who use illegal drugs unsuitable for employment. • Employee unions oppose mandatory testing of urine for evidence of illegal drug use. • AIDS testing also associated with issue of privacy.

16. Employees’ Political Activity • Hatch Act: Congress in 1939 adopted an act to prevent pernicious political activities. • Over time, the act has been amended in numerous ways. • The Hatch Act was amended in 1993 to allow federal employees to be more involved in political campaigns.

17. Patronage Restrictions • Three Supreme Court decisions have tested the constitutionality of requiring party membership or support for retention of government employment: • Elrod v. Burns (1976): The Court’s plurality opinion condemned such patronage dismissals of non–civil service employees in nonpolicymaking positions as a violation of First Amendment rights of freedom of belief and association.

18. Patronage Restrictions (continued) • Branit v. Finkel (1980): The Court held that in this instance party affiliation is not an appropriate requirement for the effective performance of the position’s duties. • Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois (1990): The Court dismissed claims that the patronage practices furthered the government’s interest in securing loyal and effective employees.

19. Values in Conflict • Civil service system, collective bargaining system, and the political system embody different values. • Governments, unions, and political parties all vie for the loyalty and service of public employees.

20. Conclusion • Civil Service is broken, partisan solutions to the problem • Obama administration has made hiring reform a top priority • Got rid of KSA essay (“knowledge, skills, abilities”) • Just a resume and cover letter, no longer “rule of three” • Increased attention to simplicity, flexibility, and efficiency