Recruit the Soldier, Put the Spouse on a Career Path

By Stephen Barr
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Recruit the soldier. Retain the family. That's been common wisdom at the Pentagon for ages.

President Bush, in the State of the Union address Monday, praised the sacrifices that military families make and asked Congress to create a new hiring preference that would give military spouses an edge in getting a civil service job. Spouses of active-duty military personnel receive preferential treatment only when they are seeking jobs in the Defense Department.

Bush's proposal would expand that advantage, probably by permitting spouses to enter the government through internships that would lead to a permanent job, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday. "It would be a career path into the civil service," the spokesman said.

Details of the proposal were not available, but most federal agencies operate two-year intern programs to recruit college graduates and other young people. The programs provide a competitive salary and benefits, and when successfully completed, the intern usually goes into a full-time job at their agency.

According to the Labor Department, the unemployment rate for military spouses is three times that of their private-sector counterparts. Frequent movement of military personnel make it difficult or too costly for spouses to establish careers or meet state credentialing and licensing requirements, the department said.

The Pentagon has been working on ways to help military spouses for several years. Most recently, in November, the departments of Defense and Labor launched a three-year pilot project, the Military Spouse Career Advancement Initiative, at 18 bases in eight states with large military populations.

Under the project, spouses are eligible for $3,000 a year to pay for education and training in "portable career fields," such as education, health care, technology, construction trades and financial services.

Participation in the project is limited to spouses of military personnel in the lower enlisted and officer ranks, E1 through E5 and 01 through 03. Spouses must have high school diplomas or the equivalent or have completed some college courses.

The State Department also has grappled with the issue. It has hiring programs so that family members of Foreign Service officers can qualify for employment in U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.

Providing military spouses with a hiring preference at all federal agencies would be a significant change to federal hiring rules. Under current law, only military veterans receive special consideration when competing for federal jobs.

Bush also called on Congress to approve legislation allowing military service members to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children.

The G.I. Bill, as the program is known, provides up to 36 months of education benefits to veterans for college, technical and other training. About 70 percent of veterans use all or a part of their entitlement.

Bush Signs and Unions Win

Before delivering his State of the Union, Bush signed a defense bill that ensures unions keep their collective bargaining rights and that employees retain their civil service rights to appeal major disciplinary actions.

The Pentagon had tried to curb those rights as part of the new National Security Personnel System. The new law exempts blue-collar Defense employees from the NSPS and ensures that NSPS employees performing at satisfactory levels receive an annual raise, locality adjustments and an opportunity for performance-based raises and bonuses.

The legislation marks the end of a four-year effort by a coalition of federal unions to fend off the department's plan to curtail their bargaining rights.

"There are not many wins in our history bigger than this one," said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Richard N. Brown, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said that "with these changes, the NSPS has a much better chance of being a success. This reform is without a doubt a victory for Defense workers."

AFGE, which has been in federal court fighting to keep its bargaining rights at Defense, has notified the government that it will drop an appeal to the Supreme Court. Although the litigation did not seek to stop performance-based pay under the NSPS, Gage said the new law will give unions an opportunity to push for fair treatment of employees when decision on pay raises are made each year.

The system currently covers 110,000 Defense workers; none are covered by union contracts.

AFGE is open to talks on how to update old civil service rules, such as job classification standards, and to bargaining at national rather than local levels, Gage said. AFGE prefers to meet with the Pentagon "sooner rather than later, for a frank discussion of where to go from here," Gage said.

Mary Lacey, who heads the NSPS program office, said, "We look forward to hearing from all of the unions and working with them."

Stephen Barr's e-mail address ishttp://barrs@washpost.com.