Letters

Mission Accomplished

In fact, Bechtel provided the government with a critically needed initial appraisal of the state of Iraq's infrastructure after years of war, sanctions and neglect. Within weeks of winning the first of two competitive contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development on April 17, 2003, Bechtel sent expert teams to all regions of Iraq to undertake a systematic, countrywide infrastructure assessment.

After careful analysis of the teams' field reports, Bechtel recommended a set of integrated initiatives to produce the most immediate and cost-effective improvements in the major infrastructure sectors covered by our contract, including power, water and wastewater, transportation, and buildings.

The value of our early assessment and planning work with USAID is demonstrated by the remarkable progress in the face of the security situation, looting and sabotage, and other obstacles. Accomplishments include:

• Enabling the reopening of the Port of Umm Qasr to commercial and humanitarian shipping.
• Completing repairs to Baghdad and Basrah International airports, enabling them to receive commercial flights.
• Reopening three major bridges (Khazir, Al Mat and Tikrit).
• Increasing by more than 50 percent the output from one of Baghdad's major power plants.
• Restoring water treatment facilities serving 40,000 residents in southern Iraq.
• Repairing the Sweet Water Canal, more than doubling the drinking water supply to residents of Basrah.
• Restoring Baghdad's landline telecommunications system for 250,000 subscribers.
• Repairing more than 1,200 schools serving more than a million students.

Special Interest Gripe

I am a consumer, worker, medical patient, taxpayer, parent and more. I am unaware of any so-called interest group claiming to represent my interests. Americans need to be more informed as to the agenda of these "interest groups," and realize that relaxed rules supposedly "good for business" actually do serve to benefit workers, consumers, taxpayers, parents, etc., with lower prices, less paperwork and less bureaucracy.

The mere existence of regulations does not serve to justify them as proper, helpful and useful. Many rules, passed in the waning days of the outgoing Clinton administration, were ill-conceived and harmful, or at best politically motivated, and many were not backed by sound science.

More Than Money

Cindy Williams doesn't seem to understand the first thing about military pay and how it affects the morale and efficacy of the military services ("Forget the Draft," Sept. 15).

I was a member of the Marine Corps for more than 30 years, and I see a few bugs in her proposed solutions.

Ms. Williams alludes to pay as a significant denominator for military service. I say bushwa. If I just wanted to make money I wouldn't have signed on to a $3,000-a-year job when I was 18 years old. I was a young man who was unsure of what I wanted to do in the future and the Marine Corps offered me an obvious challenge.

The military fosters a meritocracy; if you do well, you make more money. It doesn't matter what you do. If you're a good cook, then you make more money. If you're a good mechanic, then you make more money. If you're a good infantryman, then you make more money. How can any variable pay scale make that better?

If you want to destroy the teamwork that exists in the military today, then add an element that breeds sycophantic behavior to curry favor and get a bigger raise than the guy in the hole next to you.

How does Ms. Williams propose we carry out her plan for an all-volunteer military? Should we tie ourselves to the Labor Department statistics and reward jobs that are in high demand? Then what do we do when the forces of economy shift toward that profession and some other job skill becomes short? Do we take away that money and place it in the new deficiency? That wouldn't work. At some point everyone would achieve higher pay.

The military already has systems in place to retain specialities. They're called recruitment and retention bonuses. And guess what? They breed resentment.

The military struggles to balance the needs of the force with the typical career pattern, and it does this pretty well. It takes many helicopter pilots to fill a wartime requirement and you don't just-"poof"-make them something else when the war ends; you don't even offer them more money and expect them to move to a new job skill.

Get real, Ms. Williams. Wake up and smell the strong coffee that is served in the mess halls. Your proposed fixes to the military pay system won't work.

Major Difference

Tom Shoop's column "Trivial Pursuit" (Outlook, Sept. 15), criticized a National Treasury Employees Union legal brief asking a federal appeals court to overturn a Federal Labor Relations Authority ruling that gives federal managers discretion to determine which workplace issues are significant enough to require collective bargaining with unions.

In making such a decision, the FLRA narrowed the basic scope of collective bargaining rights and reversed 25 years of its own legal precedent. The basic scope of collective bargaining is not, as Mr. Shoop claims, a "quirk in federal labor law." Moreover, other recent decisions by the FLRA support the Bush administration's goal of eliminating union rights to negotiate workplace issues. While on a case-by-case basis these issues may seem minor to an outsider to the collective bargaining relationship, day-to-day workplace issues have an enormous impact on employee morale, motivation and retention.

Mr. Shoop correctly notes that managers should seek employee input on these issues, and I am happy to report that in cases where managers do respect and seek the input of employees and their representatives, we generally do not need to resort to formal bargaining. But when managers squander their goodwill by making changes in the workplace that adversely affect federal workers' basic working conditions without notifying them and seeking their input, NTEU will stand up for workers' rights.

Mr. Shoop trivializes the example in NTEU's brief as "shifting a few people around to install carpeting." But that case actually involved the hiring of a private contractor to temporarily relocate employees and move sensitive taxpayer files for which the employees were legally responsible. If the files were lost or stolen, the employees' careers were on the line.

Thankfully, under well-established case law and precedent, many of these recent anti-employee FLRA decisions are being overturned on appeal. Today, it might be a "so-called trivial matter" like securing taxpayer files during an office move, setting aside parking spaces or allocating office space. Tomorrow, it could be telecommuting, sick time, or work assignments.

One of the Bush administration's first actions when taking office was to rescind Executive Order 12871, the landmark provision encouraging federal agencies and the union's representing employees to collaborate over matters involving conditions of employment.

The column concludes by claiming it is sad that unions want to bargain on matters that affect federal employees. I say it's unfortunate that we have to ask the courts to convince agencies to do the right thing by the government's most valuable resource-its dedicated public servants.

Correction

In "Covering the Waterfront" (Sept. 1), the location of the Washington Navy Yard was misidentified. It's on the Anacostia River in Washington.