Posted: January 31, 2006

Women's Group Offers Advice on Revising Government Job System

The Bush administration hopes to garner congressional support this year for a proposal to abolish the decades-old General Schedule pay and job classification system by 2010 and move federal employees into pay systems that could vary by agency.

Employee groups are keeping a close eye on the proposal, and Federally Employed Women, an advocacy group founded in 1968, recently sent recommendations to every member of Congress on how to structure any government-wide changes.

The group's position paper calls for:

• Taking a phased approach to government-wide change. New pay and personnel systems should be implemented gradually, agency by agency, and probably should wait until policymakers can analyze whether pay changes at the Defense and Homeland Security departments are working as intended. The FEW paper noted that a "show me" test for such changes has been urged by the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog agency.
  
  
• Going forward on pay changes first. Proposals to revamp rules for collective bargaining and disciplinary actions should be left for later.
  
  
• Reaching out to nonunion groups, such as FEW. "It is our understanding that federal agency managers are not required to consult with federal employee organizations that are not unions," the group's paper said. "We firmly believe this is wrong and unfair. In essence, this means non-union federal workers have no input into the development and implementation of a government-wide personnel system."
  
  
• Adhering to the spirit of equal employment opportunity laws. "Women employed in the federal workforce have expressed concerns about job security, career progressions, and the future of EEO and diversity programs under the proposed personnel program," the position paper said.

The FEW paper recommends that Congress consider setting up a program to track salaries and bonuses based on race and gender if it approves government-wide changes. "It is essential that we closely monitor whether compensation is becoming biased against women or minorities as the new pay system is implemented," the paper said.

Federal managers will need training on how to administer a new system, and the introduction of performance-based pay should be a part of overall management improvements in agencies, FEW said.

"A major concern of our members is whether managers have the ability and background to assess employees' performance fairly," the paper said. One safeguard, the paper recommended, "is to have independent reviews of performance management decisions."

Prospects are uncertain for the administration's plan to replace the General Schedule with performance-based pay systems. Lawmakers face a number of difficult issues — the conflict in Iraq, the rebuilding of New Orleans, possible growth in budgetary red ink — and the Senate, in particular, does not seem inclined to take up such civil service changes.

But the president's pay advisers have said they are encouraged by the debate over their plan. In a December memo, the advisers told the president that federal pay should take into account differences in labor markets, occupations and employee performance. "We believe it is imperative to consider alternative approaches to the compensation of federal employees," the memo said.