Leadership Vacancies, Funding Limits Hurting Morale at DHS, Say Committee Witnesses
The 40 percent of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) senior leadership positions that are currently vacant or occupied by “acting” officials, coupled with appropriations instability and cuts, are producing severely low department morale, witnesses and lawmakers told the House Homeland Security Committee at a Dec. 12 hearing titled Help Wanted at DHS: Implications of Leadership Vacancies on the Mission and Morale. “In every survey on workplace satisfaction, conducted by every organization, inside or outside the government, the department has always ranked at or near the bottom,” said committee ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., in opening remarks. “Yet, the Office of Personnel Management found that over 87 percent of these employees believe that the work they do is important.” Obama nominated Gil Kerlikowske for CBP commissioner in August (see 13080219).
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The lack of permanent leadership is the primary reason for poor morale, said Tom Ridge, former DHS secretary. “If you look at DHS and you thought about it, perhaps, as a holding company, as a big corporation and you have different units of government … you got Customs and Border Protection, you got ICE, you got the Coast Guard. Every one, every one requires a permanent leader,” said Ridge. “That permanency, I think, cannot be overestimated because I just can’t imagine someone in an acting capacity getting the kind of respect and commitment than someone there permanently would get from the rank and file. They would be cautious in terms of initiative, cautious in terms of their interaction.”
The September release of the Partnership for Public Service-conducted Ten Years of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Rankings study (here) also found senior leadership in government agencies play a major role in employee engagement, said Max Stier, CEO Partnership for Public Service, in testimony. “Therefore, investing in making sure you have your leadership in place, that they’re working together as a team…is critically important,” said Stier. “DHS has done worse than the average across government, and I think the right benchmark is to look at the average and there are something agencies that have done affirmatively better, absolutely better.”
The real cause of low employee morale, however, is poor payment, disappearing benefits and unreliable appropriations, said National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen M. Kelley, adding that the appropriations climate is degrading DHS and CBP services. “While there are many reasons that morale is low at DHS, Congress could greatly mitigate that problem by providing the agency with adequate and timely funding and its employees with competitive compensation and fair treatment,” said Kelley, who represents thousands of CBP employees. “Between delayed and reduced appropriations and the sequester, government services are increasingly degraded. The cuts to CBP have already resulted in long wait times at airports and land border crossings. Wait times at the border cost the U.S. economy private sector jobs, economic output, and tariff, user fee and tax revenue.” A three year government pay freeze is particularly damaging to morale, said Kelley.
“Since 2010, when the pay freeze first went into effect and federal agency funding and worker’s benefits came under attack, survey scores have dropped on every index, both at DHS and government-wide,” said Kelley. “I talk to frontline port security workers every day and this is what they tell me: Congress’ actions, including cutting their agencies’ funding, eliminating jobs, freezing their pay and attacking their benefits are demoralizing them and making them question Congress’ commitment to their mission.” The October government shutdown and sequestration cuts are negatively impacting every CBP employee, said Kelley. The lack of appropriations is also limiting CBP capacity to generate revenue, said Kelley, adding that CBP is second only to the Internal Revenue Service as a U.S. government revenue generator.
“If you don’t have the people, if you don’t have the staffing that you need to keep the ports open, to keep the trade moving, to keep the border safe, then you have to order employees to work overtime and then they cut the overtime hours. So it has been very frustrating,” said Kelley. “There are user fees generated by CBP based on the work that they do, by visiting travelers as well as on the trade side, and when the work has to be compressed, when there aren’t enough staff to make sure they’re doing a 100 percent quality job, that will suffer.” CBP employees are also disgruntled by CBP current plans to cut awards programs and eliminate foreign language incentive programs for front line employees, said Kelley.
The number of vacancies is preventing DHS from achieving its objectives, said committee member, Donald Payne, D-N.J., placing the blame on Capitol Hill gridlock. "If not for the hyper-partisan, filibustering obstructionism that we have seen by some Senate Republicans with no other purpose other than preventing the president from achieving anything, we would not be having this hearing today. Period,” said Payne. “In the more than 200 years of our nation's history, 49 percent of the filibustered presidential appointees have occurred in the last five years alone. The obstruction that has occurred is downright shameful.” David Maurer, Government Accountability Office Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, also testified at the hearing. -- Brian Dabbs