OPM: Employees who work during shutdown will be paid (eventually)
April 6th, 2011 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Stephen Losey
The Office of Personnel Management last night posted more information on what a shutdown would mean, and cleared up one major outstanding question: “Excepted” employees who are ordered to keep working without pay during a shutdown will be repaid once the budget mess is resolved.
Most observers expected that would be the case, but OPM General Counsel Elaine Kaplan told labor representatives last month that was an unresolved legal question. (Last time the government shut down, Congress repaid everybody even if they didn’t work.) That didn’t sit well with union leaders, and last week the American Federation of Government Employees sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter that said forcing employees to work without a guarantee they would be paid would violate the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865.
So whatever happens, at least the federal government isn’t going to make its employees into slaves.
Tags: government shutdown
Republicans should ‘man-up and shut the government down,’ former OMB director says
April 6th, 2011 | 2011 Budget OMB | Posted by Nicole Johnson
In an interview with CNN, David Stockman, former Office of Management and Budget director in the Reagan Administration, was asked if he thinks congressional leaders will forgo a budget deal and allow a government shutdown to happen this week. And if a shutdown does happen, what would it accomplish?
Stockman’s response:
“The Republicans need to man-up and shut the government down. They have been bloviating for 30 years about cutting spending and have done almost nothing.”
He went on to say:
“And the government needs a shut-down crisis because both parties are dream walking. Sadly enough, we actually need a violent spasm in the financial markets to wake-up the politicians if we are to have any hope of confronting the colossal fiscal threat facing the nation.”
Divided panel sends Higginbottom nomination to full Senate
April 5th, 2011 | OMB | Posted by Sean Reilly
More than most agency chiefs, Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew could probably use a trusted number two just now.
He may have to wait a while.
Although the Senate Budget Committee approved Heather Higginbottom’s nomination for OMB deputy director today, the 11-10 party-line tally bodes poorly for a short and sweet confirmation vote by the full Senate. The panel’s top Republican, Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., has questioned Higginbottom’s bean-counting credentials and, although Sessions hasn’t said that he’ll put a hold on her nomination, he does want “adequate time” for debate, according to CQ. Not a good sign.
Higginbottom currently serves as deputy director of the White House domestic policy council; the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved her nomination—on a similarly close party-line vote—last month. The OMB slot has been vacant since Rob Nabors became White House director of legislative affairs earlier this year.
“Given the tremendous fiscal and economic challenges facing the nation, it is critical that the President has his complete budget team in place,” Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said in a news release today. “I hope the full Senate moves quickly to schedule a vote on this nomination.”
Tags: heather Higginbottom, Jack Lew, Rob Nabors, Senate Budget Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee
AFGE: Shutdown would violate anti-slavery amendment
April 5th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
One of the great unresolved questions about the possible government shutdown is whether essential employees who remain on the job would eventually get paid for the work they did. Experts first told us most likely yes, although not until the budget mess is resolved.
But the Office of Personnel Management muddied the waters last month at a labor-management council meeting when General Counsel Elaine Kaplan said that’s an outstanding legal issue that was left unresolved after the last shutdown. In 1996, Congress decided to pay everybody back — even those who were furloughed.
So nobody really knows whether you’ll ever get paid if you are called back into work this time. It may come down to how generous Congress is feeling toward federal employees these days. (Hint: Not very.)
The American Federation of Government Employees thinks this smacks of involuntary servitude, and would violate the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed slavery in 1865. AFGE National President John Gage sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder March 28 making that argument, and warning it may be unconstitutional:
Dedicated federal employees will come to work because of their commitment to the people they serve, but they should not be forced to do so under threat of termination and with no compensation. I urge you to work with AFGE and the Office of Management and Budget to craft a plan that avoids the harsh result of federal employees being forced to work without pay or be fired if they are not willing to do so.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed involuntary servitude in 1865 by mandating that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Yet in 2011 the same government that is charged with defending the Constitution appears to be preparing to order vast numbers of civilian employees, who have committed no crime, to work without pay under the threat [of] government initiated administrative discipline. This is frankly outrageous, and we fail to see how such a sweeping order survives constitutional scrutiny.
Tags: AFGE, government shutdown, John Gage, slavery
Possibility of shutdown met with applause
April 5th, 2011 | Uncategorized | Posted by Andrew Medici
The Washington Post has a good look at the current budget negotiations.
But the most interesting part for federal workers probably comes quite deep into the story, when House Speaker John Boehner told members of his own party about the possibility of a shut down (emphasis mine).
House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according to a GOP aide, gave the speaker an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown.
That is probably not the best sign.
Rasmussen poll: Just 7% think government employees work hardest
March 31st, 2011 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Stephen Losey
The polling firm Rasmussen’s latest survey results are certain to give federal employees heartburn. Only 7 percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed by phone last week said they think government employees work harder than private sector workers. A whopping 70 percent felt private sector employees worked harder.
The numbers don’t improve a great deal even when government workers’ responses are isolated. About 17 percent of government employees felt they worked hardest, and 44 percent thought private sector workers were more diligent.
The survey questions just asked about generic government workers, not specifying federal, state or local employees.
Rasmussen found that 56 percent of respondents felt the average government workers earned more than private sector employees, though that’s down slightly from the 61 percent who felt that way a year ago. And there’s a sizeable difference of opinion on that question: two-thirds of private sector workers felt government employees earned more. But only one-third of government employees thought they got the better end of the deal.
Rasmussen also released a survey March 15 that found 26 percent of adults felt that laying off 100,000 federal employees would help the economy, and 49 percent thought it would hurt matters. 66 percent of likely voters favored a plan to cut the federal payroll by 10 percent over the next decade.
OMB explores open source for IT Dashboard
March 31st, 2011 | OMB | Posted by Nicole Johnson
Following criticisms about inaccurate cost ratings and scheduling information on a White House website, the Office of Management and Budget is turning to software developers for help.
On Thursday, OMB released the software code used to develop the IT Dashboard for two reasons, federal chief information office Vivek Kundra announced in a blog post.
“First, to take the platform to the next level, we want to tap into the collective talents and ingenuity of the American people, to enhance functionality, improve the code and address existing challenges such as those identified by David Powner and his team at GAO,” Kundra said. He added that CIOs from the Netherlands, West Virginia, Chicago and around the world “are all interested in implementing these platforms in their respective organizations.”
OMB launched the IT Dashboard in 2009 to inform the public about the performance of hundreds of large IT projects, but a recent Government Accountability Office report only added to the growing skepticism of the accuracy of such transparency websites. GAO said agencies’ IT managers failed to post project baseline changes or they posted erroneous information. Also, the dashboard’s calculations of some data contributed to the problem.
“Software developers will be able to collaborate, identify errors, develop enhancements, and recommend improvements to the Dashboard, and find new uses for it that we have not even imagined,” Kundra said. He went one to say, “opening up the inner workings of the Dashboard by releasing the code and the TechStat toolkit is only a first step.”
Tags: IT Dashboard, open source
Fed Times on the air: 737 of 1.2M feds denied raises for poor performance
March 30th, 2011 | HR Management | Posted by Stephen Losey
Just 737 out of more than 1.2 million General Schedule employees were denied their step increases and accompanying raises for poor performance in 2009, as Federal Times’ exclusive investigation found. Senior writer Stephen Losey talked on Monday with Capital Insider’s Morris Jones about what this shows about the government’s performance management problems:
Tags: Capital Insider, on the air, performance management, step increases
Social Security Administration halts mailing of benefit statements because of budget crunch
March 30th, 2011 | Social Security Administration Uncategorized | Posted by Sean Reilly
The federal financial crunch has claimed another casualty: As of Tuesday, the Social Security Administration is no longer sending out annual earnings and benefits statements to millions of Americans, according to an internal notice.
“Effective immediately, SSA is suspending the mailing of all Social Security statements because of the current budget situation,” the notice says. The online service for requesting a statement has also been disabled, the notice continues. Nor can the public use Form SSA-7004 to make a request.
Indeed, type “statement” into the search engine on the Social Security Administration’s web site, and you’ll end up at a page advising that because of the budget situation, “we have suspended issuing Social Security statements.” But don’t fear: “You may be able to estimate your retirement benefit using our online Retirement Estimator,” the agency adds.
Like other federal agencies, SSA is generally operating at last year’s spending levels because Congress has failed to agree on a budget for this fiscal year. So far, however, the impasse appears to have hit America’s favorite retirement program harder than most. Last July, Commissioner Michael Astrue ordered a partial hiring freeze. Earlier this month, the agency announced an end to most employee overtime. In congressional testimony earlier this month, Astrue put the cost of printing and mailing the statements at about $70 million.
[Updated at 1:50 p.m. on March 30 to reflect the yearly costs associated with the statements.]
Postal Service looking to streamline post office closing process
March 29th, 2011 | Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Brace for a brouhaha: The U.S. Postal Service is seeking more freedom to close post offices with a package of sure-to-be-controversial proposals coming out in Thursday’s Federal Register.
The half-dozen proposed rules changes will help the struggling mail carrier “responsibly address issues pertaining to declining mail volume, customer demand and revenue shortfalls,” USPS spokeswoman Sue Brennan said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “We look forward to the 30-day comment period,” she added.
The proposals are already available online and postal officials have scheduled a Thursday media briefing to further explain the new approach. One can presume, however, that their overarching goal is to make it easier to prune a vast retail network that isn’t shrinking nearly as fast as as mail volume.
At present, for example, the Postal Service is barred from closing post offices solely to save money. Although the new proposal doesn’t appear to explicitly end that prohibition, it would allow postal officials to look at shuttering facilities suffering from “insufficient customer demand” or where communities have other ways of reasonably getting postal services.
Even before the proposed changes are officially public, however, resistance is already afoot. Mark Strong, president of the National League of Postmasters, said Tuesday that his organization will be strongly opposed. Also upset is the Association of United States Postal Lessors, which represents landlords who rent space to the Postal Service.
If “this change is adopted, we can anticipate that nearly all of rural post offices will disappear in no time and a significant number of postal stations located in lower- income areas of cities and towns will also disappear rapidly,” Mario Principe, the association’s director of lessor affairs, said in a statement.
Particularly interesting to parse will be the reaction from Capitol Hill. Members of Congress are perhaps the biggest single roadblock to closing post offices, which are often cherished–albeit money-losing–community institutions. But prominent House Republicans are now insisting that the Postal Service get its finances in order, in part by clamping down on employee pay and benefits. Will lawmakers be similarly hard-nosed when it comes to politically valuable postal real estate?
Tags: Association of United States Postal Lessors, Mario Principe, Mark Strong, National League of Postmasters, U.S. Postal Service