Unions Oppose Senate's Pay-for-Performance Bill

A Senate bill that would deny pay raises to federal employees who get poor job evaluations was endorsed by the Bush administration and drew opposition from two unions at a hearing yesterday.

The bill would require that federal employees receive a written evaluation of their job performance each year and would prohibit annual raises or within-grade increases for employees deemed less than successful by their managers.

"We firmly believe having Congress spell out these requirements by way of statute sends a powerful message to employees and managers and the American public," Dan G. Blair , deputy director at the Office of Personnel Management, testified.

But union representatives balked at the idea of tying the January across-the-board pay raise and locality adjustments to job ratings, contending that those annual raises were created in 1990 to bring salaries for federal jobs up to private-sector levels.

Annual raises "are tied to the position, not the individual in the position, and withholding these increases based on the performance of the individual in the position completely drops the goal of comparability," Colleen M. Kelley , president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said.

Jacqueline Simon , public policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, said the Senate bill "is all on the negative, the threat of punishment for poor performance." She added, "This is all stick and no carrot."

Yesterday's hearing reflected the uncertainty surrounding Bush administration efforts to overhaul the federal pay system. The Homeland Security and Defense departments have rolled out plans to change the way employees are paid, promoted and disciplined but have been blocked from imposing new workplace rules.

A federal appeals court this week delivered a legal blow to the Department of Homeland Security's plan to restrict union-bargaining rights. The Defense Department's effort to impose similar restrictions on unions was rejected by a federal district court in February and is on appeal. The departments are continuing with initiatives to shift their employees to pay-for-performance systems, but it is unclear how far they can go if unions decide to assert a right to bargain over the procedures that will be used in the new performance-based systems.

The Bush administration also has not gotten any traction for a plan unveiled last year to transition the rest of the government into pay-for-performance and abolish the largest government-wide pay system, the decades-old General Schedule, by 2010.

Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) authored the bill discussed at yesterday's hearing, which he called as chairman of the Senate federal workforce subcommittee. The bill appears designed to find some middle ground between the administration and the unions; it retains the General Schedule, does not seek to limit union rights and would emphasize managerial training and tighten procedures used to evaluate employees.

Voinovich did not engage union officials in debate over his bill yesterday but said a series of provisions would protect employees against arbitrary or capricious decisions by managers.

He asked Blair to provide him with data on employees, including federal executives, who feel they have not gotten a fair shake on pay decisions by their managers.

The senator asked unions to review and give him feedback on the first phase of the Pentagon's new National Security Personnel System, which links job ratings to pay raises. Simon said the NSPS relies on "highly politicized standards" to evaluate employees, and Voinovich asked her to report back with examples.

Voinovich said he thinks the Pentagon is phasing in new pay and job performance rules "in a thoughtful and careful manner." He added, "The point is, this can be done well in the federal government. . . . I believe most employees want to know that their supervisor is paying attention. They want to know where they stand and how they are doing on their job."

Unless Voinovich can win some Democratic support and ease union concerns, his bill's chance of passage in an election year appears remote. As the hearing ended, Voinovich said, "I'm aware nothing will get done without unanimous consent this year."

Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.