THE DAILY FED
Improper Agency Hiring Detailed
Top officials at the National Credit Union Administration instructed managers to track the race and gender of job seekers and then told them to delete the information from files before auditors discovered it, according to an Associated Press report.
Documents released at a House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee hearing Tuesday revealed that the agency disregarded federal rules prohibiting the tracking of race and gender prior to employment in order to hire preselected candidates.
An Office of Personnel Management audit revealed that 60 to 80 credit-union examiner jobs had been filled using improper hiring practices.
NCUA officials said regional managers adopted the practices in an attempt to hire more minorities, women and people with disabilities.
"Duplicate the . . . applicant list and annotate it with the applicant's sex, race, national origin and disability, when known," Executive Director Karl Hoyle told managers in a memo. "Retain the original list, without annotation, for the case files."
When the agency learned that OPM was planning an audit, Human Resources Director Dorothy Foster instructed hiring staff to remove race, gender and disability information from their files.
"We are counting on you to clean up your own" files and remove "the identification of applicants by race and national origin," Foster wrote in a memo last April.
NCUA Chairman Norman D'Amours told the House subcommittee that the agency has taken steps to correct the problems in its hiring practices.
"It's clearly wrong, clearly illegal and shouldn't have happened," D'Amours said.
As a result of the revelations, Foster and Hoyle were placed on administrative leave and NCUA was stripped of its hiring authority.
The case was referred to the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency created to protect federal workers, for investigation.
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