FACTS
ON MANAGEMENT FLEXIBILITY
Personnel
Flexibilities
The following
authorities, which are available generally throughout the
government, would be particularly useful to the new
Secretary of Homeland Security in integrating and
reorganizing the new agencies transferred into the
Department —
•
Demoting and firing poor performers —
Federal agencies can demote and fire employees who perform
poorly. Under
civil service statutes, an agency must grant the employee a
reasonable time to improve performance, after which the
agency owes the employee 30 days’ advance notice of a
decision to demote or fire.
The employee has due process rights in case the
agency acted arbitrarily.
•
Reassignment — Existing law generally
allows the Secretary to move employees around in the
department, either by permanent reassignment or temporary
detail.
•
Recruitment and retention bonuses —
Existing law also allows the Secretary to offer recruitment
bonuses or special salary rates if necessary for recruitment
of high-quality employees, as well as retention bonuses.
•
Critical pay levels — The Secretary
of Homeland Security can offer specially high rates of pay
when necessary to sustain recruitment or retention efforts,
or to attract highly expert professionals.
•
Temporary use of help services —The
Secretary can make use of commercial help services for
temporary personnel completely outside of the civil service
system when there is a critical need.
•
Performance bonuses — Agencies may
give cash bonuses, as well as raises, as a reward for
superior performance.
Flexibilities
provided government-wide by the Voinovich/Akaka amendment to
Homeland Security bill passed out of Governmental Affairs
Committee
•
Direct hiring authority — allows
agencies to hire whomever they want, without going through a
competitive hiring process, if OPM determines there is a
critical hiring need. This
authority will expedite and simplify the hiring of critical
personnel by the new Department.
•
Simplified hiring — for routine
hiring, improves outdated competitive-hiring procedures to
speed up and improve the selection and hiring of new
employees.
•
Early retirement / retirement bonuses
— called “workforce shaping tools,” these authorities
will help DHS strategically staff the organization with
employees who possess the skills and abilities needed to
respond to shifting priorities and needs.
•
Performance bonuses — will help DHS
retain superior senior managers by revising outdated rules
that require that bonuses be spread over two years.
Responses
to Ari Fleischer’s quotes on Thursday
In
explaining Bush’s objections to the Homeland Security bill
that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee
Thursday, July 25, 2002
, Ari Fleisher was wrong about current civil service rules,
which provide far more flexibility than he said.
Prompt
suspension and firing in the interests of national security
Ari
Fleischer: “If a Border Patrol
agent is found to be intoxicated, and lets a potential
terrorist into the country, he or she cannot be fired without
a written 30-day notice and must be paid during that notice
period.”
Response:
A Border Patrol agent may be removed from the post and
suspended immediately without pay, if the agency head
considers that action necessary in the interests of national
security. Then,
after an investigation and review, the agency can fire the
employee with no appeal. The
President may grant this authority to any agency head to
suspend and fire employees in the interest of national
security, including the new Department of Homeland Security.
Pay
raises for high performers
Ari
Fleischer: Bush wants managers to have the authority to
give homeland security employees salary increases as merited.
Under current rules, pay raises must go through a
cumbersome process that can take months or years.
Response:
Not true. Civil
service statutes and regulations do not require any process,
cumbersome or otherwise, that agencies must follow in granting
their employees raises for high performance.
President Bush and the new Department of Homeland
Security are free to fashion as fast and streamlined a process
for giving merit raises as they can.
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