By Donald Devine
Published: 12-05-08
Candidate Barack Obama may have murmured only sweet platitudes to the general public during the campaign but we now have learned he privately gave detailed assurances to Federal employees promising pretty much everything on the public union agenda.
In late October John Gage president of the largest federal union the American Federation of Government Employees asked Sen. Obama for specific promises for his members and bragged “he didn’t flinch” putting them in writing which the union distributed directly to its 600000 supporters evading media scrutiny. The union members were given assurance without upsetting the average voter who tends to be suspicious of promising bureaucracy favors to those supposedly representing the public interest.
Separate letters were directed to nine agencies but they all promised to reduce contracting government business to private sector firms to make private sector regulation more aggressive on labor and environmental matters and to defer more to career bureaucratic expertise rather than “censorship” by political appointees. These are the three top public sector union priorities. They all mean more money and power to Federal unions.
Less contracting-out means more union-represented work within government more regulation means more government regulators and deferring to careerists means more union influence and control. Sen. Obama did qualify his position somewhat by saying that “Because of the fiscal mess left behind by the current Administration we will need to look carefully at all departments and programs but the general tone was more power and responsibility to the unions and their employees.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development was promised political leaders who supported HUD’s “mission” as understood by its union employees promising that careerists would become “part of the solution” of the nation’s housing crisis indicating this would mean more federal housing regulators.
The Social Security Administration was promised more adjudicators to process claims. The Department of Labor was promised more inspectors especially for the Bureau of Mines. The Bureau of Prisons was promised more corrections officers. The Environmental Protection Agency was promised tougher standards of regulation and presumably more regulators to enforce them.
The only agencies that were not promised more employees were the largest one the Department of Defense and the immense Department of Homeland Security – both of which were increased greatly already by President George W. Bush in the face of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Even the unions did not expect more bodies here but both of these agencies also were forced to create new streamlined personnel systems to avoid bureaucratic delays in the face of foreign or domestic emergencies.
Since these two agencies represent more than half of Federal employment the unions’ greatest fear has been that if these new systems were successful they would be applied to the rest of the government. The Obama letter specifically promised the new Transportation Security Administration a return to the same bargaining and work rules as the older bureaucratic agencies.
Over the years since the new agency procedures were adopted the unions have challenged them in court successfully delaying their implementation by claiming that the union right to collective bargaining overrides management’s right to implement work decisions even in emergencies.
The unions were successful in getting Candidate Obama to promise to examine the so-called “flaws” in these pay and work-evaluation systems and to support collective bargaining for all work procedures. This would in effect negate the legislation intended to limit bargaining and allow more efficient work procedures in responding more quickly to terrorist and other emergencies probably allowing the unions to pretty much return to the pre-9/11 red-tape procedures.
Frustrating bureaucracy reform however is merely a Pyrrhic union victory. In making these requests and by pressing President-elect Obama to accede to them the unions are their own worst enemies. The fact that union employees can second-guess government management decisions is what made them so inefficient that even before 9/11 and Katrina administrations of both political parties have contracted out so much work to the more efficient private sector.
Inefficient and expensive union work evaluation and pay rules are precisely what chase work outside of government. Frustration with this inefficient personnel morass led Democratic President Jimmy Carter to reform the whole civil service system in 1976 and led even union-friendly President Bill Clinton finally not to fully implement his earlier plan to make all management decisions subject to the approval of labor-management councils giving equal voice to unions in management decision-making.
Democratic presidents are in an especially difficult position. They rely on organized labor support to win elections. With the great decline in union representation in the private sector public sector unions are that much more important contributing funds and manpower to Democratic candidates. But Democratic presidents also believe in an active government that can perform a wide variety of functions better than the private sector such as health care education and energy. If the unions put procedure over results as they tend to do government clearly cannot deliver much less perform better than the private sector. That is why bureaucracy reform was so important for President Carter. He needed efficient government if government was to pursue a greater role over the environment economy and social life generally.
If the Federal sector unions convince President Obama to scrap the new more efficient personnel systems for Defense and Homeland Security adopted in the wake of 9/11 it will likely just increase the recent tendency to contract more work out to the more efficient private sector.
Yes Candidate Obama also promised less contracting out to private firms but President Obama presumably wants a more effective national government to implement his promised new programs. Will he chose the unions or more effective government? Will he even in fact support giving more control to career officials over his own political appointees?
Candidate Obama has promised his hand to the unions but Mr. Obama would not be the first president to break off the engagement when recognizing that the cost of public sector courtship is red tape delay and frustration of policy goals.
Will he fulfill his promise to increase Federal employment and power or will the modern trend of contracting public work to the private sector continue? Or will the financial crisis be so severe that both civil service and contracted government workforces go down as they clearly will in the private sector? We shall soon see if President Obama pays off the unions or tries to make the government work.
Donald Devine the editor of Conservative Battleline Online was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.
