Help us improve in just 2 minutes—share your thoughts in our reader survey.
Competitive service
| What is the federal civil service? The federal civil service is made up of individuals other than military personnel who are employed by the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of the federal government. The civil service is subdivided into the competitive service, the excepted service, and the Senior Executive Service. |
| Administrative State |
|---|
|
| Five Pillars of the Administrative State |
| •Agency control • Executive control • Judicial control •Legislative control • Public Control |
| Click here for more coverage of the administrative state on Ballotpedia.
|
| Click here to access Ballotpedia's administrative state legislation tracker. |
The competitive service, also known as the classified service, is a subset of the federal civil service that is made up of civilian government employees who are hired according to a merit-based selection process administered by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Their positions are standardized, or classified, according to a series of grade levels with associated compensation. Members of the competitive civil service are subject to federal civil service laws under Title 5 of the United States Code aimed at ensuring certain workplace protections, such as procedural protections against removal and discrimination.[1]
| President Donald Trump (R) moved administrative law judges from the competitive to the excepted service in July 2018. Read more here. |
Background
- See also: Civil service
Early civil service
The federal workforce of the United States during the late 18th century was very small—for example, the State Department was staffed by nine employees—and federal workers were rarely removed from office. However, politically-aligned patronage appointments and removals of federal employees became common during the 19th century, most notably under president Andrew Jackson. According to University of Tennessee professor Daniel Feller, Jackson "claimed to be purging the corruption, laxity, and arrogance that came with long tenure, and restoring the opportunity for government service to the citizenry at large through 'rotation in office.'" During this period, individuals were often rewarded for partisan loyalty and service through appointments to government positions, a process that became known among historians as the spoils system. After the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by a disgruntled federal job-seeker, President Chester Arthur supported the call to end the spoils system and implement a merit-based system for the selection of federal employees.[2][3][4][5]
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 eliminated the spoils system and established the competitive service, a merit-based system for the appointment of federal executive branch employees. The new system, overseen by the U.S. Civil Service Commission, allowed individuals to apply for government employment and compete through examinations rather than seek an appointment to a position on the basis of their political ideology or government connections.[3][6]
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, members of the competitive civil service gained workers compensation protections, retirement annuities, and procedural protections against removal, which ensured that federal employees could only be fired for just cause. By the 1970s, however, federal employees began to express dissatisfaction with perceived shortcomings in their procedural protections and discriminatory practices in the workplace.[2][7]
Civil Service Reform Act of 1978
- See also: Civil Service Reform Act
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) reaffirmed the merit system selection process, codified collective bargaining practices, and identified prohibited practices in applicable executive agencies and departments, including nepotism and discrimination on the basis of age, sex, race, religion, or other specified factors. The legislation also created guidelines for the removal of personnel for unsatisfactory performance and created the Senior Executive Service, a separate tier of administrators "designed to attract and retain highly competent senior executives," according to the legislation. Moreover, the CSRA replaced the U.S. Civil Service Commission with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to implement rules and oversee the management of the federal executive workforce, the Merit Systems Protection Board to process employment-related hearings and appeals, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority to establish guidelines and resolve issues related to collective bargaining.[8][2][9]
Scope and structure
- See also: Senior Executive Service and excepted service
The merit system established by the Pendleton Act implemented the competitive service through the creation of classified positions in federal agencies. Classification standardized certain government positions according to the functions and responsibilities of the role. Besides the competitive service, the federal civil service also includes unclassified government positions within the excepted service and the Senior Executive Service.[10][11]
Growth of classified positions
The Pendelton Act identified roughly 10 percent of civilian positions within the federal government as classified positions subject to merit-based selection. According to Murray Rothbard, former professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, these positions included clerks in Washington, D.C., as well as large post offices and customhouses. The remaining civilian positions in the federal government were labeled as unclassified positions and remained subject to the partisan appointment and removal of the spoils system.[10][11]
The Pendleton Act allowed for the president to convert unclassified positions to classified positions at his discretion, with the exception of laborers and high-ranking officials whose appointments required the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. Though the Pendleton Act originally granted the president the authority to remove classified employees, an 1897 executive order under President McKinley, later codified in the Lloyd-LaFollette Act of 1912, implemented protections against political removals for classified positions. According to Rothbard, classified positions in the federal government increased during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as presidents labeled unclassified positions as classified positions to protect the tenure of political appointments. Rothbard observed:[10][11]
| “ | The merit system advanced not because of further action by Congress, but because of executive action. Ironically, executive action stemmed more from a desire to place fellow party members permanently in the civil service than from a wish to reform. The process involved replacing all political enemies with political friends in a branch of the unclassified, or unreformed, service and then extending the rules to cover it. This process was hastened by the alternation of party control in the 1880s and 1890s, which led Presidents every four years to make additions to the classified list. The irony was compounded. The advance of the merit system stimulated rapacious spoils methods in the unclassified service, and the civil service reform movement itself languished.[10][12] | ” |
For example, President Theodore Roosevelt used his presidential authority to increase the number of classified positions during his administration. When Roosevelt assumed office in 1901, 46 percent of the positions in the federal civilian workforce were categorized as classified positions. When Roosevelt left office in 1909, the classified positions had been extended to include 66 percent of the federal civilian workforce.[10]
Fifty-two percent of federal civilian employees worked in classified positions as of June 1996, according to a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. A September 2016 report by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management identified 1,868,027 civil servants in the executive branch, with the exception of the U.S. Postal Service and certain other specified agencies.[13][14]
Compensation
The Classification Act of 1923 established a uniform system of compensation for the classified civil service. The legislation organized classified positions into a series of grade levels with standardized compensation according to the duties and responsibilities of each role. Over the course of the 20th century, the compensation system for classified positions was modified and adjusted by Congress, including changes under the Classification Act of 1949, the Federal Salary Reform Act, and the Federal Pay Comparability Act of 1970. As of 2017, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management classified most positions according to fifteen grade levels, with certain exceptions, ranging from GS−1 to GS−15.[15][16]
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ USA Jobs, "Entering Federal Service," accessed August 15, 2018
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Encyclopedia.com, "Civil Service Acts (1883)," accessed September 29, 2017
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 USHistory.org, "American Government—8a. The Development of the Bureaucracy," accessed October 2, 2017
- ↑ University of Virginia—Miller Center, "ANDREW JACKSON: DOMESTIC AFFAIRS," accessed October 2, 2017
- ↑ U.S. Office of Personnel Management, "Our History," accessed October 4, 2017
- ↑ Encyclopedia Britannica, "Pendleton Civil Service Act," accessed September 29, 2017
- ↑ American Historical Association, "What Is Federal Civil Service Like Today?" accessed September 25, 2017
- ↑ Office of Personnel Management, "Civil Service Reform Act of 1978," accessed September 30, 2017
- ↑ U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority, "The Statute," accessed September 30, 2017
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Journal of Libertarian Studies, "BUREAUCRACY AND THE CIVIL SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES," Summer 1995
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 The American Interest, "Civil Service Reform: Reassert the President’s Constitutional Authority," January 28, 2017
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ U.S. Office of Personnel Management, "Data, Analysis & Documentation—Federal Civilian Employment," September 2016
- ↑ United States General Accounting Office, "The Excepted Service—A Research Profile," May 1997
- ↑ The National Academies Press, "Improving the Recruitment, Retention, and Utilization of Federal Scientists and Engineers," 1993
- ↑ U.S. Office of Personnel Management, "Introduction to the Position Classification Standards," accessed October 4, 2017
