Hiring Freeze. . .Hiring Schmeeze
By David S. Orr
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Federal employees, who are largely hard-working, loyal, dedicated and technically excellent, are automatically in tuned to two major happenstances -- staying home when it threatens to snow and rumor-mongering whenever there's a presidential transition. The latter at least has some basis in historical fact. Transitions, particularly with presidents who promised to "clean up the mess in Washington," or "eliminate all those wasteful spending programs," or best of all, "get rid of all the dead wood," have been bloody in varying degrees.
At the agency where I worked during the incoming Carter Administration, his "Georgia Mafia" displayed an uncanny degree of ignorance of the federal civil service system, reaching down into the GS levels searching for "Republican holdovers" to fire or reassign. Extremely disruptive and largely ineffective. The outgoing Clinton people reportedly removed all the "W" keys from their computers to show their feelings for the incoming G. W. Bush folks. Juvenile at best.
And all of them imposed some sort of meaningless metric to the federal workforce in vain attempts to show the American public that they had managed to rein in this huge, previously unmanageable bureaucracy.
We had "Average Grade." By golly, we were going to make the government more efficient and effective by lowering the average grade - maybe down to a GS-9. One need not be an HR expert to see some of the problems with this approach - how do you tell NASA, or the National Institutes of Health to reduce their average grade when they need to hire the cream of the scientific/engineering crop with advanced degrees? "Oh come to work for us - we know that a GS-9 isn't reflective of your Ph.D, but maybe we can let you telecommute. . ." And just like Louie in the classic film Casablanca, I was shocked, shocked to learn that one large DOD component went out and hired a bunch of GS-3's - they didn't need them, but it certainly reduced their average grade.
And then there was "Supervisory Ratios." This was one of Vice-President Al Gore's innumerable strokes of genius, right up there with inventing the Internet and discovering global warming (as I sit here in D.C. under a snow emergency). HR expert Gore reasoned that if supervisors had, let's say, fifteen employees under them, rather than five to ten, the government would be a lean, mean, Reinventing machine. And let's not forget all the "Team Leader" positions that were spawned as a result - bargaining unit positions, I might add, without suggesting that there was any pressure from organized labor to cut supervisory slots in favor of staff positions that could be filled with dues-paying union members. So we established team leader positions, some at higher grades than the employees, adding yet another layer to the bureaucracy, but dutifully filing our reports with OPM certifying that our average grade was going down, sometimes as much as 5%. It was all part of "Reinventing Government" and I have not one, but two "Hammer" lapel pins to prove it!
But the hands-down favorite has been the dreaded "Hiring Freeze." Yes, folks, we're going to put a lid on this bloated bureaucracy starting right now!! Yeah, right, like you're going to tell the IRS that they can't replace any of the auditors or agents who leave. Or the FBI, or the Secret Service - vacancies on the Presidential Protective Detail? Sorry - you'll have to make do. . . And bringing us up to date, not enough TSA airport screeners? Oh well, just close some of the checkpoints - that will go over well with both airlines and passengers.
You see, incoming administrations, even those who campaigned on an "anti-Washington, D.C." theme, soon discover that hiring freezes quickly melt. There's always an exceptions clause, requiring agencies to get OPM or OMB approval to hire for "critical" or "national security" positions. That sounds easy - are Social Security staff "critical?" They are if you're on Social Security. What about FEMA? There was a time when FEMA had a well-deserved reputation for excellence (it was a long time ago). Do we let their operational staff decrease by 20%? No problem, unless a hurricane just reduced your town to rubble. And over at the VA, where there's already a backlog of military disability claims. . . can't they can make do with a few less claims administrators?
So is there anything to the rumors of a hiring freeze by the Obama Administration? Let's look at some tidbits in the $3.6 trillion budget just submitted to the Congress. . .
AGRICULTURE - $26 billion (6% increase), in part for increased aid to rural communities and increased resources for food and nutrition programs
EDUCATION - $47 billion, some directed at set-aside grants for low-income youth and increased spending for improved teacher training, testing and struggling schools
EPA - $11 billion (35% increase) - to redirect resources for climate change and clean water programs
HOMELAND SECURITY - $43 billion (6% increase) - to fund increased Border Patrol staffing
HUD - $48 billion (18% increase) - among other things, for huge block grants to develop low-income neighborhoods and increases in rental voucher programs
LABOR - $13 billion (5% increase) - increased attention to employee safety and wage administration
STATE - $52 billion (10% increase) - will fund foreign aid and additional diplomatic initiatives; increased staffing in the Foreign Service and USAID
VETERANS AFFAIRS - $56 billion (11% increase) - increased attention to returning active duty members and expanded health care programs
Does any of the above indicate a hiring freeze? It doesn't jump out at you as a very smart idea. . . If anything, it translates to MORE jobs. Any lingering doubts should have been put to rest by recent reports in the Washington Post and a full -seven-minute segment on CNN that predicted anywhere from 50,000 to 250,000 new federal hires, depending on which reliable source was being quoted. And speaking of reliable sources, the conservative talkshow hosts are vehemently decrying what they predict to be the largest increase in federal employment since the hated Roosevelt (Franklin, that is).
Of course, just because they asked for $3.6 trillion, that doesn't mean they'll get $3.6 trillion -- it could be less, and with different spending priorities. And with the state of the economy, it's not outside the realm of possibilities that a temporary "window-dressing" freeze could be imposed -- or maybe specific agency freezes -- perhaps while the proposed budget is being debated, amended and voted on. But along with those talk show hosts, I think your time is better-speny worrying about the snow -- maybe by April, they'll have the main roads cleared. . .
Just my opinion.
© 2010 David S. Orr. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without express written consent from David S. Orr.
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