The past several weeks, like most of this year, have been a bumpy ride for federal employees when it comes to pay and benefits issues. President Bush's decision to give most employees a day off on Christmas Eve came on the heels of an announcement that the Pentagon was scrambling for money to pay civilian employees' salaries as a result of budget delays and might have to start issuing furlough notices.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have stepped in to suggest that the Defense Department find an alternative that would prevent furloughs. But the fact that the situation got to this point at all represents a fundamental problem with shaping federal employee pay and benefits policies. Two weeks ago, I wrote that President Bush's approach to federal employee pay policy was similar to Lucy's approach to Charlie Brown's desire to kick the football. But President Bush isn't solely to blame.
Between gridlock in Congress, budgetary constraints and a hodgepodge of pay for performance pilot projects, it sometimes seems like Uncle Sam is running a dysfunctional family business. It's not an impossible leap from the Aoki family fighting over the Benihana fortune to the realization that money for federal salaries and benefits always will be in high demand from other quarters. And it's not a long way from the Trumps' frenzied product creation to the overload of suggestions for how to make the federal government an attractive, competitive employer. The maelstrom of competing interests, the enormity of issues such as the Iraq war and health care virtually guarantees that no single issue will get the attention it needs.
None of the benefits bills examined in this space in August, from a proposal from Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., to let federal retirees use pre-tax dollars to pay health care premiums to a bill backed by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., that would increase the government's contribution to those same health care premiums by 8 percent, have moved beyond the committees to which they were assigned.
The lawmakers who introduced these bills and other legislation that would shape the federal workforce are hardly to blame for the failure of their proposals to advance. They should be commended for looking for thoughtful solutions to the many challenges the federal government will face in recruiting, retaining and maintaining the morale of its workforce.
And there are worse approaches out there. GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's suggestion that retiring federal employees simply not be replaced is a prime example of a vision that fails to meaningfully analyze what they do, much less how they ought to be rewarded.
There's been plenty of warning that the government has to seriously rethink itself as an employer. References to the coming "retirement tsunami" are frequent to the point of absurdity. Independent groups like the Partnership for Public Service are taking it on themselves to sell the federal government as an employer to a new generation of young people, and to retiring private sector workers who still have good years and good experience left to contribute. Unions and federal employee groups have hardly been silent about their dissatisfaction with various pay and benefits issues. And in an admittedly unscientific poll, huge majorities of Government Executive readers panned the President's Human Capital agenda.
So here's a possible New Year's resolution for everyone involved in shaping the conditions of employment in the government. After those two days off, make human capital issues a priority in 2008. Compared to finding a solution to the situation in Iraq, or health insurance for 47 million Americans, figuring out ways to motivate and reward several million federal employees doesn't seem that daunting.