part iii: people in government organizations
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Part III: People in Government Organizations. Chapter 8: The Civil Service. 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 - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Part III: People in Government Organizations
Chapter 8: The Civil Service
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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)
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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
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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.
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Staffing Separations
• Average length of service = seventeen years for full-time, permanent, nonpostal employees
• Hard to remove mediocre employees
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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