PERSONNEL AND WORKFORCE
(Sidebar to "Reform Trickles In")
The Clinton Administration's civil-service reform bill would redefine the role of the Office of Personnel Management and decentralize personnel procedures. Some of the bill's provisions:
Hiring System
- Authorizes OPM to delegate examining authority for all occupations to agencies.
- Gives agencies the option of hiring non-permanent employees for up to five years for jobs having a foreseeable end.
- Permits agencies to extend the probationary period for new supervisors and managers from one year to up to three years.
- Requires agencies to provide transition assistance to employees who are adversely affected by workforce reductions.
Performance Management
- Requires agencies to bargain with employees to create new performance management programs.
- Authorizes agency heads to approve individual incentive awards of between $10,000 and $25,000.
- Allows managers to cut poor performers' pay by up to 25 percent for 120 days.
Alternative Personnel Systems
- Eliminates most current restrictions on demonstration projects, including limits on the number and size of projects.
- Authorizes OPM to convert successful demonstrations into alternative systems with no time limits.
Classification Reform
- Retains the 15-grade General Schedule salary structure, but abolishes statutory definitions of grade levels.
- Directs OPM to establish government-wide criteria for broad-band pay systems.
Labor Law Reform
- Establishes the following "good government standard" as the policy framework for collective bargaining: "An agency and a labor organization are obligated to bargain collectively in good faith and consistent with the promotion of increased quality and productivity, customer service, mission accomplishment efficiency, quality of work life, employee empowerment, organizational performance and, in the case of the Department of Defense, military readiness."
- Provides statutory authority for the National Partnership Council and agency labor-management partnerships.
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