Thread: Unions: Equal Work for Less Pay

Originally Posted by OBGibby

What I certainly don't agree with is the fact that some federal employees are allowed to unionize and negotiate contracts or agreements.

The last time I checked Uncle Sam isn't in the habit of conducting the people's business through democratic means. Wow, FAA employee's didn't "vote" for a pay system change, so it must be bad, and awful, and all things un-American. They didn't "vote" for the change, so somehow they've been thrown under the bus, and this is unfair...

I didn't "vote" to allow lazy, incompetent, sack of beans colleagues we've all known throughout our careers to get the same raise I got every year in the GS system, even though I busted my ass doing good work, time and again. Somehow that little inconvenient aspect of the GS system never caught the attention of the union folks during the previous 70 years of the GS system. Funny how we never saw the unions organizing and protesting that. (And before you ask, Yes - I am aware that the GS system has mechanisms in place to reward high performers and penalize and weed out the slackers. Too bad it is so infrequently used.)

I didn't "vote" to only get a X.X% pay raise this year, so that must be unfair as well. I didn't "vote" to see my health care premiums go up, so that must be unfair. I didn't "vote" for my first line supervisor who got promoted ahead of more qualified and competent competitors, so that also must be unfair. I didn't "vote", well you get the picture. Sorry for the rant, but two things that have been really irritating me of late are unions and federal employees bellying aching about pay and benefits. Do we have the absolute best benefits and pay? Probably not. But they're pretty good in my estimation, and good be a whole lot worse. Sometimes we forget just how good we have it...

Core compensation, or pay banding, or broad banding, or whatever you want to call it, has been introduced, expanded, tweaked and disavowed, bad-mouthed, praised, and all things in between, since at least 1978. All of the aforementioned by both Republican and Democratic administrations, and both Republican and Democratic controlled Congresses.

My personal opinion of pay banding (and I have worked under pay banding), is that I like it in theory. Unfortunately, it's been my experience that a great many federal managers could not, and would not, fully utilize the mechanisms already in place under the GS system to properly manager their folks. Additionally, in my line of work (criminal investigations), the implied "every man for himself" aspect of pay banding is counterproductive, and potentially dangerous. If the managers I spoke of above couldn't fully exploit the GS system, I have no confidence that those same managers would be able to navigate and administer pay banding appropriately, considering that the administrative burdens probably increase ten-fold. So, in the real world I'd like to see pay banding go the way of dinosaurs and I'd like to see managers using all appropriate parts of the GS system to get the best out of their employees and to trim excess fat from the rolls.

From what I've seen it seems like the smaller agencies, where the vast majority of the employees basically do the same types of jobs, have found pay banding to be good. I'm thinking of some of the intelligence agencies in particular.

Very well said OB.

CB