Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) vigorously supports the goal of increased objectivity in employee awards programs throughout the federal government, but has serious concerns about the ability of new regulations proposed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to accomplish that goal, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said.

In a letter to OPM, Kelley warned that proposed regulations “appear to ignore many of the potential problems with awards programs run by some agencies.” She emphasized that “NTEU’s recommendations are based on substantial experience with negotiating the details of performance award systems as well as arbitrating systemic flaws in programs.”

The NTEU leader identified some of these problems as a lack of uniform award levels for employees performing at the same high level; the persistence of personal favoritism and/or bias on the part of award decision-makers; and secrecy in the operation of the programs.

She also warned of the potential for disparate impact on classes of employees based on race, national origin, gender, grade or bargaining unit status from changes in personnel policies and called on OPM to order agencies to conduct adverse impact analyses of awards programs on a yearly basis.

President Kelley pointed to NTEU’s support of efforts to link awards to employee performance evaluations, but added that from the union’s experience, “such efforts are effective only if employees know that their successful work will, in fact, be rewarded proportionately.”

She expressed concern to OPM that “some agencies will read these proposed regulations as a mandate to change current performance evaluation systems,” and in that light called on OPM “to make clear that these regulations address only the effect that evaluation systems have on awards programs where awards are tied directly to performance ratings, and are not meant to change performance evaluation requirements.”

As an example of a successful employee awards program, President Kelley held out the NTEU-negotiated arrangement with the Internal Revenue Service. Under this far-reaching program, employees are awarded “shares’ on the basis of an employee’s annual evaluation appraisal and grade. This, she said, “ensures that awards will be distributed evenly, fairly, and in a way that increases, as a percentage of salary, as performance increases.”

In her submission, the NTEU president made these specific comments and recommendations:

· If meaningful distinctions are to be made in an awards program based on performance, then such awards should be given to all employees at that performance level;

· OPM should mandate that awards budgets for bargaining unit and non-bargaining unit employees be kept separate and distinct—an important tool in helping eliminate the potential for favoritism and bias;

· Awards programs must be conducted in a transparent manner. Agency secrecy is a consistent problem that suppresses employee performance and fosters speculation as to how and why awards are being administered.

She underscored the secrecy problem by pointing to the Bureau of Customs of Border Protection (CBP), which—despite losing an arbitration decision to NTEU over its unilateral decision to drop the negotiated joint awards procedure and impose strict secrecy on the awards decisions of a management board—has said it intends to continue imposing the same secrecy provisions an arbitrator just rejected.

“OPM should work to ensure that these awards processes are open, providing accountability and transparency,” President Kelley said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments.