3.29.2005
A New Deal (WashingtonPost.com)
How to Shake Up the Bureaucracy? Change the Work Rules.
By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 28, 2005; Page C01
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers made a deal when they signed up with Uncle Sam. Whether they were janitors pushing a broom or naval designers floating tiny model destroyers or econometricians micro-simulating Social Security scenarios, the deal was the same:
They would do good work, even rewarding, satisfying work. It wouldn't be sexy work, and it wouldn't make them rich. But what they would get was stability, the federal holidays, transit subsidies, Cadillac health care, the flextime allowing every other Friday off. The hours would be regular. The raises would come -- click, click, click up the general service scale. No one would insist that a GS-5 or GS-15 be anyone's political crony. And, when the day came to get out, they would get their pot at the end of the rainbow -- a fat federal pension, plump enough for a cabin in the woods, maybe, or a fishing skiff and condo in Florida.
Hand in hand with Uncle Sam, they would construct lives of comforting predictability.
Oh, every decade or so, some politicians would rumble about the bloated bureaucracy and talk sternly of the need to shrink big government. They would insult the workforce. Deride them as lazy. Red-tape creators. And the civil servants, the very engine of this region's economy, would put their heads down, mumble to each other in the agency cafeterias and wait them out. Eventually, those politicians would go back to wherever they came from. They always did.
Until now. President Bush and his Texas comrades have succeeded in doing what no one else could in 120 years of civil service.
They have ended the deal.
(More ... A New Deal (washingtonpost.com)) ¶ 09:09
By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 28, 2005; Page C01
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers made a deal when they signed up with Uncle Sam. Whether they were janitors pushing a broom or naval designers floating tiny model destroyers or econometricians micro-simulating Social Security scenarios, the deal was the same:
They would do good work, even rewarding, satisfying work. It wouldn't be sexy work, and it wouldn't make them rich. But what they would get was stability, the federal holidays, transit subsidies, Cadillac health care, the flextime allowing every other Friday off. The hours would be regular. The raises would come -- click, click, click up the general service scale. No one would insist that a GS-5 or GS-15 be anyone's political crony. And, when the day came to get out, they would get their pot at the end of the rainbow -- a fat federal pension, plump enough for a cabin in the woods, maybe, or a fishing skiff and condo in Florida.
Hand in hand with Uncle Sam, they would construct lives of comforting predictability.
Oh, every decade or so, some politicians would rumble about the bloated bureaucracy and talk sternly of the need to shrink big government. They would insult the workforce. Deride them as lazy. Red-tape creators. And the civil servants, the very engine of this region's economy, would put their heads down, mumble to each other in the agency cafeterias and wait them out. Eventually, those politicians would go back to wherever they came from. They always did.
Until now. President Bush and his Texas comrades have succeeded in doing what no one else could in 120 years of civil service.
They have ended the deal.
(More ... A New Deal (washingtonpost.com)) ¶ 09:09
