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Washington, D.C.—A government report calling for far greater workforce planning by federal agencies “serves to underscore” the need to focus on key elements of employee recruitment and retention programs, particularly better pay and benefits and a work environment that rewards and values employees, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said the report by the General Accounting Office [GAO] “paints a very serious picture of the ability of federal agencies to perform their missions in coming years—unless we take action now.”

GAO analyzed hundreds of critical positions in 24 executive branch departments and agencies, and estimated that about half the eligible employees—some 236,000 workers—will retire from federal service by 2006, a loss of some 15 percent of the 1998 workforce, and one that would be in addition to the estimated four percent of the workforce that will leave federal agencies prior to retirement eligibility.

The independent GAO said the loss in expertise and skill would be far greater for some agencies and in some positions than for others. For example, it projected the loss of Internal Revenue Service Revenue Agents, a key position within the IRS, at 22 percent. Kelley noted that this loss would be on top of a decline among Revenue Agents of some 17 percent just since 1995.

“Clearly, the failure to make the federal government the employer of choice adversely impacts the ability of agencies to deliver the programs and services the American people want and deserve,” Kelley said.

A loss of 15 percent across the 24 agencies studied would be about equivalent to that sustained by federal agencies during mid- and late-1990s downsizing, the GAO said, noting that a lack of adequate planning by agencies during those cutbacks created a number of serious problems in providing the kinds of services American taxpayers wanted and expected.

While GAO called for better planning in light of the likely wave of retirements, Kelley said she saw the results of the study done for a congressional committee as emphasizing the need for greater training and

promotional opportunities for federal workers, as well as for a more competitive pay and benefit package to encourage them to remain in federal employment.

“We have this extraordinary expertise among federal workers,” Kelley said. “It is foolish, and costly, not to take every step we can to make it a priority to retain as many of these employees in federal service for as long as we can.”

NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.