Name:   Talullahhound - Subject:   Government employee unions Date:   11/16/2016 9:51:18 PM

Actually, the unions have very little to do with the employees themselves. Most people do not belong to unions.  In my humble experience, unions spend more time talking about what can do than what they can actually do because of civil service rules and procedures.

The real problem is the evaluation system and it is very cumberson.  In order to fire an employee a superviser has to document poor performance and counsel the employee.  Then, there has to be an improvement plan put in place, and perfromance has to be documented every 30 days.  If there is improvement, then the whole thing stops.  If there isn't, then a supervisor has to document that.  Probably by this time, the employee with have filed a grievance with the Civilian personnel Office, and while they can't grieve performance, they can say that they are being held to a different standand.  At this point the supervisor and the next senior manager have to meet with CPO because they are the subject of grievance and are on the defensive to prove they are treating the employee to the same standard. Now it gets really complicated, generally speaking, the employee will be given another chance and the superviosr is now documenting performance again. One of the problems is that to some extent, performance reviews of somewhat subjective.  This is not a factory where you can measure #of widgets produced, but involve analysis, so it is pretty hard to define the fine line.  The Civil Service laws are written to protect the employee - that was to protect employees from retribution from political bosses, firing them to hire their friends.  It takes about 3 years to fire an employee, assuming that a supervisor has not been told by their Agency or Department to stand down.  It happens. 

Now I managed to fire an Office Director in less than 90 days.  He had used government money inappropriately and displayed poor judgement in the use of the taxpayers funds.  He had a security clearance.  Because of his actions, I asked the DIA to look into it and they pulled his security clearance.  If you need a security clearance to work at a job, and you don't have one, then you are unable to perform your duties and if you can't perform your duties, you must be let go.  And security clearance issues are not CPO issues, they are Security issues.

As far as the VA, employees probably have a very easy excuse.  The need literally exceeds the resources.  I'm not saying that the VA isn't bad, because it is awful.  But a lot of what happens there is beyond their control.  VA has a very low pay grade structure, so you are not getting top talent.  And they are not staffed for the workload.  The best thing the VA could do is hire an outside hospital Administrator (or 100) that knows something about running hospital type organizations.  A friend knew a retired 1 star that got a job there after retirement, but he had no experience with hosptial administration.  That's likely what you get. And don't foreget that the Drs. are mostly contract, so other than how they are personally, they don't really have any incentive to work more hours.

Nothing about the government is easy.  And to change those laws, you are going to fight history, and the CPO itself.  The Union makes a lot of noise, but I'm not sure how much influrence they have.  We could discuss who runs the unions, but we'll leave it there.