When President Bush was elected, many feds nicknamed his administration Bush II. They assumed it meant a continuation of the policies, from pay reform to courting the career Senior Executive Service, that endeared former President George Bush to many in the civil service.
But after three years, some feds say a more correct description of this administration is Reagan III, the Clinton years being Reagan II.
Aided by a less confrontational civil service and the first Republican-controlled Congress in decades, many of the reforms dreamed of by President Reagan’s administration have come to pass.
Congress has given agencies whose work force is more than half civil service the authority — and the blessings — to depart from civil service rules and procedures in areas of hiring, firing, pay, promotions, appeal rights and union representation.
Downsizing continues, though not at the brisk and expensive (more than 140,000 buyouts averaging $25,000 each) pace set by the Clinton administration.
New, streamlined rules aimed at speeding up competition between federal workers and contractors bidding for their jobs are being used by more and more agencies.
There is a pattern — presumably to keep federal workers happy or at least in the dark — of making a big deal when civil servants beat out contractors in relatively small, low-budget bidding battles, but not issuing press releases when contractors more often than not win bigger, more lucrative contracts from Uncle Sam.
The Bush administration also has continued the Clinton policy of ignoring the 1990 Federal Pay Act (enacted by a Democratic Congress and signed by the first President Bush), and instead given civil servants smaller raises than promised under the pay formula and attempted to give them smaller percentage pay raises than those proposed for the military.
Normally, this kind of thing would be inside baseball, inside-the-beltway talk of interest only to the relatively small group of lawyers, lobbyists, policy wonks and reporters who follow civil service matters. But it has a direct bearing on even the lowest-ranking fed, in the remotest outpost of government.
Unions that largely were silent during the 1990s downsizing — which eliminated thousands of promotion opportunities for rank-and-file feds — and a series of diet pay raises either found their voices or came under new management with new leaders.
They are now blasting the Bush administration for just about every move it makes.
Life in the civil service has always been about a lot more than pay, benefits and job security. Now many government workers who once read about private companies outsourcing and issuing pink slips realize that such news items are no longer confined to the business section of hometown newspapers. Many realize that they are now getting the business, too.
• Mike Causey, senior editor at FederalNewsRadio.com, can be reached at 202/895-5132 or mcausey@federalnewsradio.com.
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