AFSCME Information Highway

Source: Ken McDonnell, EBRI Notes, Vol. 29 no. 6, June 2008

Nature and work forces of public vs. private sector have major differences--
Major reasons for the differences in total compensation costs between state and local government employers and private-sector employers are the different composition of their respective work forces and the different nature of public- vs. private-sector work. State and local government jobs include education and public safety functions (teachers, police, and firefighters), which involve high levels of education, training, physical fitness, or risk) and largely do not exist in the private sector. Unionization rates also are higher in the public sector than in the private sector.

Compensation costs higher for state and local government due to work force characteristics--
Overall total compensation costs as of September of 2007 were 51.4 percent higher among state and local government employers ($39.50 per hour worked) than among private-sector employers ($26.09 per hour worked).

Health and retirement costs higher in the public sector to support better benefits--
State and local governments have sharply higher costs for health and retirement benefits than private-sector employers, since their workers participate in these benefits at far higher rates and public-sector workers are far more likely to have defined benefit (pension) retirement benefits than are private-sector workers.

Posted by Info Center at 3:07 PM in Benefits | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: James R. Brunet, Public Personnel Management, Vol. 37, no. 2, Summer 2008
(subscription required) (scroll down)

While much recent attention has been given to the outsourcing of government services, little is known about the opposite situation in which private organizations retain the services of public workers. Such is the case when off-duty municipal police officers work for private concerns. Police officers have specialized training and law enforcement authority, two commodities in high demand in the private labor market. This analysis seeks to answer three questions about this largely unexplored personnel practice: (1) How much off-duty work is being undertaken? (2) How do departments administer the practice? And (3) What issues and/or conflicts emerge from this blending of public and private spheres. Data were collected through interviews with representatives from the 18 largest police departments in North Carolina and through a review of off-duty policies. The article concludes with suggestions fro maximizing the public benefits that accrue when police officers work for private entities.

Posted by Info Center at 5:08 PM in Law Enforcement | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Jonathan Walters, Governing, May 2008

Pensions are getting less generous for a new generation of government workers. Will they tolerate equal work for unequal benefits?

Starting next July, public employees hired in the state of Kansas will be second-class citizens, in a way. They will have to pay more into the employees' retirement fund than workers who came on board before them do. They'll have to clock more years on the job in order to collect their pension. And when they do go on to retire, the new group of workers is set to receive less generous payouts than their brethren hired before July 1, 2009.

It's not for spite that the future hires are getting a lesser deal. The reason is more straightforward than that. The Kansas pension system is $5.4 billion short of full actuarial health. By lumping the next generation of workers into a second "tier," Kansas expects to take considerable pressure off the pension fund's long-term finances. What's more, since the workers getting nicked haven't even accepted the job yet, there was no natural constituency to oppose the plan in the legislature.

The notion of dinging future hires in the name of pension health is nothing new -- New York State began tiering its employees back in the early 1970s. But with retirees living longer, the stock market in flux and state and local budgets getting tighter, a growing number of states are tiering in the name of maintaining their pension funds. Just in the past three years, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Texas have acted to create new classes of employees. For anyone about to go into government work in those states, retirement may be a little further out , and a little less sweet, than for those who toiled before them.

As Kansas found, tiering can make for an elegant political fix. That's particularly true because state law in Kansas, as in many states, prohibits taking away benefits promised to existing employees. There's evidence, however, that bifurcating pension benefits simply pushes pension conflict down the road. As the second tier's ranks swell and gain in political power, those employees inevitably agitate to win back what they lost before starting to work.

Posted by Info Center at 5:01 PM in Pensions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: M. Corinne Larson, Government Finance Review, Volume 24, no. 1, February 2008

From the abstract:
A recent survey on public pension investment practices shows that many of the plans have active, sophisticated investment programs in place, and the trend is toward expanding the types of investments made. Therefore, finance officers involved with pension investing will need to understand increasingly sophisticated money management techniques.

Posted by Info Center at 11:07 AM in Pensions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: IBM, January 2008

In this publication you will find dozens of short, real-life stories of challenges met--and transcended--through fresh thinking and the creative application of state-of-the-art information technology (IT).

We've grouped these stories by the three main segments of the public sector, but urge you to browse outside your own industry to see if there are any new, "outside the box" ideas that may be useful for your organization.

Posted by Info Center at 4:48 PM in Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Chief Human Capital Officers Council

The Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council is pleased to provide its first Collection of Human Capital Practices for the Federal human resource community.

Over the past several years, through the President's Management Agenda, Federal agencies have made significant improvements in their strategic human capital procedures. As agencies continue to improve their human capital practices, it is critical to share those successes so others may learn from them. The most effective way to collect and showcase agency human capital practices is through the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council. Now entering its fifth year, the CHCO Council is the natural catalyst for identifying, compiling, and sharing human capital strategies within the Federal Government.

This document contains several human capital strategies from a number of agencies on topics including performance management, learning and development, closing competency gaps, and telework. Each individual synopsis was submitted by the agency implementing the highlighted strategy. We identified the agency practices through such means as the 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey, our CHCO Council Training Academy sessions, and the Council's subcommittees.

Full report (PDF; 8.3 MB)

Posted by William at 10:48 AM in Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Center for State and Local Government Excellence, March 2008

From the summary:
A new Center for Excellence poll finds that most Americans are unaware that state and local public health departments are facing a serious shortage of skilled professionals that could put the health and lives of citizens at risk.

See also:
Fact Sheet: The Impending Shortage in the State and Local Public Health Workforce

Posted by Info Center at 5:59 PM in Health Care Workers | Public Sector | Workforce | Permalink

Source: Government Accountability Office, GAO-08-223, January 2008

Pension and other retiree benefits for state and local government employees represent liabilities for state and local governments and ultimately a burden for state and local taxpayers. Since 1986, accounting standards have required state and local governments to report their unfunded pension liabilities. Recently, however, standards changed and now call for governments also to report retiree health liabilities.

Posted by Info Center at 5:35 PM in Pensions | Public Sector | Retirement | Permalink

Source: Aaron McKethan, Terry Savela, and Wesley Joines, The Lewin Group, January 2008

In recent years, health system stakeholders have experimented with a wide range of efforts to stimulate quality improvement, often combined with efforts to contain costs. In this report, the authors explore strategies that public and private purchasers are using to improve care quality, focusing specifically on the role that states play as employers providing health benefits for public employees and retirees. Examples of innovations used by state public employee health plans include: promoting provider adherence to clinical guidelines and best practices, publicly disseminating provider performance information, implementing performance-based incentives, developing coordinated care interventions, and taking part in multi-payer quality collaborations. This report can be used by public employee health plans and other large purchasers making strategic decisions about how to develop or coordinate quality improvement initiatives.

Posted by Info Center at 2:50 PM in Health Reform | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Kimberly A. Helton and Robert D. Jackson, Public Personnel Management, Vol. 36 no. 4, Winter, 2007
(scroll down)(subscription required)

Through its workforce and succession planning efforts, Pennsylvania is committed to proactively indentifying, preparing for and maintaining pools of well-trained and motivated state government employees to assume critical positions of leadership. But the concept of leadership extends beyond senior-level positions within agencies. The goal in Pennsylvania is to improve leadership capabilities in every work unit and to encourage all employees to use their skills to build stronger teams. Leadership at all levels means equipping employees with the tools, skills and expectations to communicate effectively and foster leadership at every organizational level. Leadership at all levels ensures that no lack of business continuity results from staff departures such as retirements, resignations, promotions or reassignments or other situations in which an individual is unable to or unwilling to continue his or her role within an organization.

Posted by Info Center at 1:16 PM in Employment Practices | Management | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Ethics Resource Center, 2008
(Free registration required)

From press release:
With employees at all levels of government witnessing a high incidence of ethical misconduct - and with many local and state entities, particularly, failing to establish strong ethics programs - the public sector is at considerable risk of seeing major ethics scandals unfold, the Ethics Resource Center's National Government Ethics Survey (NGES) shows.

"The next Enron could occur within government," said ERC President Patricia Harned, Ph.D. "Almost one quarter of public sector employees identify their work environments as conducive to misconduct - places where there is strong pressure to compromise standards, where situations invite wrongdoing and/or employees' personal values conflict with the values espoused at work. Government - especially at the state and local levels - simply is not doing enough to address the problem."

The federal government fared slightly better when workers at all three levels were questioned about incidents of misconduct, their reporting of those actions and the existence and quality of programs to enforce ethical standards.

Posted by Info Center at 2:31 PM in Public Sector | Whistleblowing | Permalink

Source: Michael H. LeRoy, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Volume 28, no. 2, 2007

The Thirteenth Amendment ban on involuntary servitude has new relevance as the United States grapples with national emergencies such as catastrophic hurricanes, flu pandemics, and terrorism. This article considers work refusal and coerced work performance in the context of life-threatening employment. Overwhelmed by fear, hundreds of police officers and health care workers abandoned their jobs during Hurricane Katrina. Postal clerks worked against their will without masks in facilities with anthrax. A report by Congress demonstrates concern that avian flu will cause sick and frightened medical personnel to stay away from work, thus jeopardizing a coherent response to a crisis. How far can the U.S. go in forcing reluctant civilians to perform essential jobs during a national emergency? The author explores solutions to his question by hypothesizing a large release of radiation--whether by terror attack, catastrophic accident, or major earthquake--in a vital Pacific port.

Posted by Info Center at 1:43 PM in Emergency Management | Laws/Legislation | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, Governing, Vol. 21 no. 1, October 2007

No one knows much about how public pension funds are governed or who's governing them. It's about time we did.

Even governments that don't have dramatically underfunded pension plans are facing unprecedented problems in paying for their liabilities, largely as a result of prior years' decisions to put off actuarially required contributions and a more recent phenomenon: the growth in the number of retirees.

Posted by Info Center at 11:22 AM in Pensions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: PA Times, Vol. 30 no. 9, September, 2007

Salaries for state-employed professionals registered modest to health increases from 2006 to 2007, although most state employees still earn far less than their private sector counterparts, according to the 2007 AFT Public Employees Compensation Survey, the only national survey that tracks such trends. The median increase in average salaries across the 45 jobs surveyed was 5.7 percent from 2006 to 2007, the highest increase recorded in the last five years, the AFT study shows. ... Across all 45 occupations, the collective-bargaining advantage averages about 14 percent.

Posted by Info Center at 5:52 PM in Compensation | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: C.W. Von Bergen, William T. Mawer and Barlow Soper, Public Personnel Management, Vol. 36 no. 3, Fall 2007
(subscription required) scroll down

During the last decade more than 100 governmental units (primarily cities) have implemented living wage ordinances. These regulations require private sector employers who receive public funds through subsidies and contracts to pay their workforces a wage based on "need" rather than "skill." Such ordinances feature a minimum wage floor that is higher--often much higher--than the traditional minimum wages set by state and federal legislation. This paper provides a history of the living wage movement and presents its benefits and challenges to assist local authorities in decision-making regarding this controversial and politicized issue.

Posted by Info Center at 4:31 PM in Minimum Wage | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Martin H. Malin and Charles Kerchner, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 30 no. 3, Summer 2007

From the abstract:
The rapid increase in charter schools has been fueled by the view that traditional public schools have failed because of their monopoly on public education. Charter schools, freed from the bureaucratic regulation that dominates traditional public schools, are viewed as agents of change that will shock traditional public schools out of their complacency. Among the features of the failed status quo are teacher tenure, uniform salary grids and strict work rules, matters that teacher unions hold dear. Yet unions have begun organizing teachers in charter schools. This development prompts the question whether unionization and charter schools are compatible.

Posted by Info Center at 2:41 PM in Collective Bargaining | Collective Bargaining - Public Sector | Education | Labor Unions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), August 2007

From http://www.naccho.org/press/releases/pr2007_09_10.cfm:
Federal funding received by local health departments for all-hazards emergency preparedness fell 20 percent last year, according to a new report by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). The report says that continued cuts in funding provided through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) threaten important, hard-won advances made in recent years in response planning to natural disasters, bio-terrorism events, emerging infectious diseases, and other public health emergencies.
See also:
National Preparedness Month

Posted by Info Center at 1:03 PM in Emergency Management | Health Care Workers | Public Sector | State & Local Finance | Permalink

Source: Roderick B. Crane, Michael Heller, Paul Yakoboski, TIAA-CREF Institute, May 2007

From the summary:
This paper examines many of the sometimes-controversial issues raised in discussions regarding the design and funding of retirement plans for public employees. However, it does so in a different way. By focusing on development of appropriate benefits and funding policies and the use of risk management principles, we hope to provide public sector policy makers a better way to develop sound and sustainable retirement benefit policies for state and local governments and their employees based on our organization's nearly 90 years of experience providing retirement security to individuals working in the non-profit sector.

Posted by Info Center at 12:58 PM in Pensions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: CIGNA/ICMA, March 2007

From the summary:
In 2006, ICMA conducted a survey of local governments to determine the goals, needs, and concerns they have regarding their employee health insurance plans. CIGNA sponsored the survey as part of its ongoing commitment to provide assistance to local governments on employee health care issues. The survey was fielded as one of the initiatives of the ICMA Health Care Advisory Group, which was launched in 2006 to help local government managers assess and address what has become, for many, one of the biggest costs in their budget. More than 2,200 local governments responded to the survey. The following is a summary of the survey results.

Posted by Info Center at 4:48 PM in Health Care | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Stuart Greenfield, Center for State and Local Government Excellence, 2007

There are about 84 million baby boomers -- defined to be those aged 42 to 61 in 2006 -- who account for more than 30 percent of the U.S. population and more than 45 percent of total nonfarm employment last year. As the cutting edge of the baby boom generation begins their seventh decade, this aging trend will have an impact on the general workforce and an even more pronounced impact on the public sector workforce.

Posted by Info Center at 4:47 PM in Public Sector | Workforce | Permalink

Source: American City and County, September 4, 2007

State employees' salaries rose slightly from 2006 to 2007, but they still lag behind what the private sector pays for the same jobs, according a report by the Washington-based American Federation of Teacher's (AFT) Public Employees division. The median increase of 5.7 percent for the 45 jobs included in the "2007 AFT Public Employees Compensation Survey" is the highest increase in the past five years.

Posted by Info Center at 4:45 PM in Compensation | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: IPMA-HR, EquaTerra, 3006_082007

From the summary:
Two of the most critical activities within the human resources (HR) domain are recruiting and staffing. This involves identifying and attracting the right people to fill positions, ranging from upper management and key decision-maker roles to entry-level personnel. Finding the right person for each position and doing so in a cost-effective and timely manner is a challenge for any organization, but it is becoming especially difficult for public sector entities. This IPMA-HR research study sought to understand what public sector HR organizations do to identify and attract qualified applicants, what methods and strategies work well, and what difficulties organizations encounter in these efforts. The white paper is available here.

Posted by Info Center at 4:43 PM in Public Sector | Workforce | Permalink

Source: Meredit Newman, Mary Guy, and Sharon Mastracci, Public Management, Vol. 89 no. 6, July 2007
(subscription required)

Police officer, social service counselor, 911 call taker, caseworker, prison guard, receptionist, public health nurse, counter clerk, and public schoolteacher: What do all these public service jobs have in common? They all require that a relationship be developed between the service provider and citizen. This requires artful affect and is called emotional labor. Our research into the work experiences of local government workers makes it clear that emotion work is at the heart of service transactions and can be described as “real work.” Many, if not most, public service jobs require interpersonal contact that is either face to face or voice to voice. Those who staff the counter at the tax collector’s office are expected to greet the 100th citizen of the day with the same sincerity as they greeted the first. Those who staff the phone lines for the manager’s office are expected to be “nicer than nice.” Caseworkers must care about strangers, and inspectors who work for planning and zoning departments are required to treat each aggravated homeowner with fairness and courtesy. In the aftermath of a hurricane, first responders must address not only physical disaster but emotionally traumatized citizens. Police officers and prison guards will tell you that they engage in emotion work every day, but at the other extreme. Rather than being nurturing and gentle, their jobs require them to wear a “game face,” to act tougher than they actually feel, and to engage in verbal judo with lawbreakers. This work is relational in nature and is called emotional labor. Such work “greases the wheels” so that people cooperate, stay on task, and work well together. It is essential for job completion. In fact, such skills are prerequisites for quality public service.

Posted by Info Center at 1:23 PM in Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Robert Roberts, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2007
(subscription required)

In Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit a public employer from disciplining a public employee for the contents of an official memorandum made in the course of the performance of official duties, even if a federal court finds that the contents of the memorandum involved a matter of "public concern." This article argues that the Garcetti decision modifies the Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) and Connick v. Myers (1983) two-part test by requiring federal courts to first determine whether or not the public official made a communication in the course of the performance of official duties. The article also argues that it remains to be seen whether the Garcetti decision will have a significant impact on the willingness of public employees to make use of official channels to raise legitimate concerns over actions taken or not taken by their organizations.

Posted by Info Center at 5:55 PM in Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Perspectives 2007, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, June 2007

Summary

The Global Public Sector annual report, “Perspectives 2007,” outlines the incredibly diverse needs of 21st century citizens and the challenges facing governments today. At every level of government, from basic infrastructure to technological advancement, constituents are demanding public service evolution. This report observes the ever-changing obstacles of governments at the many different levels where they touch citizens’ lives and offers examples of lessons learned executing solutions to these challenges.

From providing food and water, to securing trade and encouraging participation in the global community, governments are relying more and more on the input of citizens. By taking technological advancements and innovation in the private sector and coupling it with a more distributive approach, governments have an opportunity to respond to the changing demands of the population.

Posted by Info Center at 5:12 PM in Public Sector | Permalink

Source: David Pym, Richard Taylor, Chris Tofts, HP Labs, HPL-2007-22, February 16, 2007

Governments struggle to understand how technologies may be used to innovate in the development and delivery of public sectors. Frequently technologies are seen as quick and effective fixes for problems that may run far deeper than obvious process and user dynamics. As often, solutions are considered as ‘point provision’ and as such fail to recognise the complex co-evolution of society, economics, the world outside a government’s borders and control, and the technologies themselves. This paper summarises a number of key areas that must be understood in order to effectively innovate through the introduction and management of services mediated by new technologies.

Posted by Info Center at 4:08 PM in Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Dick Grote, IPMA_HR News, March 2007
(subscription required)

True or false: Good workers should get paid better than bad workers. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But the apparently obvious concept that those who do better work should receive better pay underlies one of the most puzzling public sector performance management issues: the notion of pay for performance. Before a pay for performance system can work, the tool to measure performance must be solidly in place. That’s why it’s a good idea to develop a good performance appraisal system before you tinker with the compensation system. But the conventional appraisal system used in most cities and state agencies doesn’t have the horse power to drive an effective pay for performance effort. The system has to be scrapped and recreated so that the city’s mission statement and vision and values are clearly linked to individual performance.

Posted by Info Center at 10:29 AM in Compensation | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Josefa Ramoni-Perazzi and Don Bellante, Journal of Labor Studies, Vol. 28 no. 1, Winter 2007

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we apply propensity score matching methods to examine evidence on the rent paid to public sector workers in the United States. Traditionally, wage differentials are computed assuming that workers from both public and private sectors are comparable, without actually controlling for the comparability of the units. Using this method, we are able to control for selection bias and, at the same time, select a subsample of comparable workers in terms of their conditional probability of choosing to work in the public sector on which to estimate separate wage equations.

Posted by Info Center at 5:23 PM in Benefits | Labor Unions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Gerald W. McEntee, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

These are unprecedented times for public service workers and the unions that represent their interests. The largest of these unions is the 1.4 million member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO. In recent years, AFSCME has been thrust into the role of defending sweeping attacks on public employees and public budgets at every level of government.

Throughout its 70-year history, AFSCME has waged effective battles that have enabled public employees to join the ranks of the middle class—winning collective bargaining rights, facilitating the adoption of merit-based job performance systems, growing public employee pension plans, securing wage increases, and helping create a vibrant public sector that provides effective services to citizens and helps local economies realize their potential.
Today, much of the historic progress achieved by public workers is at risk. Ultimately, how successfully AFSCME and its fellow public unions meet five core challenges in the areas of privatization—fiscal limits, civil service reform and pension reform—will determine the future of America’s public sector.

Posted by Info Center at 10:42 AM in AFSCME | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Thomas J. Calo, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

This article examines the changing nature of employee and labor relations in the United States. A significant shift has occurred in the employee relations environment between the public and private sectors. As union representation in the private sector workforce has steeply declined, there had been a sharp and steady increase in third party representation in the public sector workforce. The reasons for these changes are explored.

The article goes beyond the issue of labor relations to the broader issue of positive employee relations in the workplace. Exploring employee relations from a behavioral science perspective, the article describes and discusses the psychological contract as an organizing framework for understanding and achieving positive employee relations in the workplace. The article also draws upon the author’s professional human resource experiences in the public and private sectors.

Posted by Info Center at 10:40 AM in Labor Unions | Labor-Management Relations | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Joseph Adler, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

Of the approximately 20 million public employees in the United States, more than eight million are either members of or represented by labor unions—a penetration rate of just over 40 percent. What is remarkable about this phenomenal growth is that most of the expansion of union activity in government has occurred within the last 40 years, and almost mirrors the decline of union strength in the private sector.

The rise and fall of labor in the private sector is a backdrop to the growth of public sector collective bargaining. Explanations for the dramatic increase in government union activity can be explored from a number of different perspectives. Current public policy efforts to reform civil service and allow managers greater flexibility are seen by some researchers as having the potential to impact the ability of public sector unions to represent their members effectively.

Posted by Info Center at 10:37 AM in Future of Unions | Labor History | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Joseph Adler, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

Public Sector Collective Bargaining is a relatively recent phenomenon—its lifecycle can be traced to and indeed may be a lasting legacy of the “baby boomers” entering the public sector workforce in record numbers. Outside of a few traditionally union-friendly or politically progressive jurisdictions, union activity among government employees was virtually unknown and unheard of in the 1950s. During the next two-plus decades, however, union membership rates saw explosive growth so that by 1979 about 38 percent of public employees were either members of or represented by unions. Despite an occasional setback, public sector unions managed to stay close to this rate for the next 27 years. Ironically, the ascendancy of public sector unions almost mirrors the decline of private sector unions; at one time they represented more than one-third of America’s workers; today they represent less than nine percent.

At the initial stages of public sector union organizing there was a robust discussion among practitioners, researchers, and others concerning the changes unionization might cause to the body politic over resource allocation, the determination of public policy, the use of political pressure at the bargaining table and the role of the “public” in bargaining, plus the potential shift in power favoring unionized employees. Acceptance of collective bargaining in government has indeed resulted in changes both at the macro public policy/administration level, and the micro human resource administration level. It is hoped that this special issue rekindles the inquiry and debate both from an academic as well as a practitioner perspective.

Posted by Info Center at 5:39 PM in Collective Bargaining - Public Sector | Public Sector | Permalink