Written Statement of Dennis M. Roth 
President
Congressional Research Employees Association (CREA)
Before the Subcommittee on Legislative Branch, Committee on Appropriations
United States House
May 5, 2009
Madam Chairwoman and Members of the Subcommittee,
My name is Dennis Roth, and I am President of the Congressional Research Employees Association or CREA. We are the exclusive representative of all employees in the Congressional Research Service. On behalf of all the CREA elected officials and our members I thank you for giving us the opportunity to testify today.
I would like to focus my comments today on the work environment at CRS, and the Library as a whole, and make the following points. First, CREA strongly believes that more can, and should, be done within CRS and the Library to provide staff with opportunities to move up within the organization. While there are programs in place to provide training that would give employees that skills needed to accomplish this, there has not been the commitment to take the next step and promote from within. Second, CREA was pleased to hear about the Library’s willingness to participate in the 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey, but has concerns about the way the survey was implemented and the subsequent follow-up. CREA believes that CRS employees should have an anonymous and confidential mechanism to provide management feedback on the extent to which conditions that characterize successful organizations are present in their agency. Third, CREA urges the Subcommittee to support efforts giving CRS employees a more flexible telework option. CRS management cites Congress’s needs as its reasons for being unwilling to consider a more flexible policy. We need Congress to spur CRS to be more flexible. Fourth, CREA asks the Subcommittee to encourage both CRS management and CREA to take concrete steps to improve their working relationship. I will conclude with a brief discussion on the CRS budget, and an update on the reorganization of the Office of Opportunity, Inclusiveness, and Compliance.
The FY2010 Budget Request and the FY 2008- 2013 Strategic Plan’s Workforce Goal
In the fall of 2007 the Library issued its Fiscal Years 2008-2013 Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan identified five strategic goals. Of particular interest to CREA members is the strategic goal entitled “Workforce.” As I testified a year ago, the Library’s FY 2009 Budget Justification made little mention of this goal other than to state that it would “…receive focused attention and a commitment to action.” The Library’s current budget submission gives this goal minimal attention once again. It does mention some efforts associated with the Workforce goal, such as: the number of supervisors taking the supervisor development program, the intention to maintain an aggressive recruitment of qualified and diverse candidate employees, and the intention to begin a senior-level development program. However, there is little reporting on any of the specific measures stated in the Strategic Plan that would be used to evaluate the Library’s progress in this area.
An ongoing workforce concern among staff has been the paucity of opportunities for upward mobility within the Library and within CRS. As with most Federal agencies, a significant percentage of the Library’s workforce is ready to retire. Now is an excellent opportunity to assist and develop expertise within the current staff to fill many of these jobs. However, CRS and the Library continue to hire overwhelmingly from the outside. While some of this is necessary, current staff should be given sufficient opportunities to demonstrate that they can be the workforce of the future for CRS and the Library.
There are already programs “on the books” to do this. In CRS there is the Career Opportunity Program and the Library has the Affirmative Employment Programs, the newly developed Career Development Program (for staff in lower graded positions) and will launch a revised Leadership Development Program (for staff in the middle grades). We applaud the Library for establishing these programs, but they are not being fully supported. Furthermore, it is equally important that management be committed to the next step in the process and promote participants in these programs into the positions for which they are being trained.
To help these programs succeed , the Library must also complete, soon, its promised detailed succession plan that identifies “future positions and competencies” and a corresponding “identification of strategies to address skill gaps for future positions” that includes the use of current staff, to move this initiative forward. Regardless, we believe that the Library, including CRS, should be developing an internal selection policy so that they will be ready to fill positions identified in the succession plan from within.
Federal Human Capital Survey 2008
In late 2008 the Library had OPM administer its Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) to Library of Congress employees. OPM characterizes the survey as
” a tool that measures employees’ perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies.”
I want to state at the outset that CREA applauded the Library’s decision to have Library employees participate in this Survey. CREA has suggested that this be done in past testimony. Unfortunately, the Library intentionally excluded a critical question, “Which Service Unit do you work in?” Consequently, while the results of the Survey are an aggregate across the Library, it is not clear that it is representative of the Library, as a whole, or of any given Service Unit, given the potential bias in participation rates between Service Units. Furthermore, each Service Unit is a distinct culture, with different missions and different sets of employee/management issues. The Survey is unable to distinguish how employees in CRS feel from how people in Copyright, or Library Services, or the Law Library feel.
For example, one of the questions in the Survey asks “How satisfied are you with telework/telecommuting.” CRS has a very restrictive, essentially non-existent telework policy compared to other parts of the Library. To assume that the results from that question represent the experience of CRS employees would be misleading. Similarly, 73.8% responded positively to the question, “My supervisors support my need to balance work and other life issues.” Is this reflective of how CRS employees feel when CRS is the only Unit in the Library that doesn’t offer its bargaining unit employees credit hours?
In an effort to address this issue, the Library has now asked the management of each Service Unit to consult with their staff to try and determine whether the aggregated results accurately reflect the environment within their individual Units and to develop action plans to address those areas identified as in need of improvement. This process compromises the original strengths of the Survey – anonymity and confidentiality. It is reasonable to assume that staff might not feel free to critique management openly, in person. Also, the informal nature of these discussions makes any attempted refinement of the Survey results even less meaningful. In the meantime, a significant amount of staff time and energy and money is being spent on what CREA regrettably feels has been a lost opportunity.
The Library has informed staff that it is their intention to offer the Survey again, and that this time, results will be broken out by Service Unit. We strongly support this, and ask the Subcommittee to require the Library and CRS to report on its results.
Telework
If I may focus a moment on the question of telework, last year when I raised this issue with this Subcommittee the chairwoman noted that CRS would be an appropriate organization to support telework because of its research nature. We agree. However, CRS management will not entertain any proposal to make telework more available to staff. As mentioned earlier, current policy is highly restrictive and is premised on the intractable belief by our director that Congress wants CRS staff to be able to come to your offices, in person, at a moment’s notice. We agree that this could be the case in certain situations. However, it is the experience of CRS employees that this does not happen very often. A reasonably designed telework program can accommodate these situations. CRS staff are highly motivated and highly dedicated to serving Congress, and they should be trusted to make themselves available in-person when needed. We request your assistance by strongly encouraging CRS to be more flexible in granting work-at-home requests.
Currently, there are two major telework bills that have been introduced in Congress, H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvements Act of 2009 and S. 707, the Telework Enhancement Act, that seek to expand telework in the Federal government. The Library of Congress, including CRS, currently is not covered by these bills. As these bills work their way through the legislative process, we request that the Library of Congress, including CRS, be covered in the final passage of these bills. However, these bills allow the agency head to make ineligible those employees whose duties and responsibilities require “daily face-to-face contact” with other people or require “on a daily (every day) basis on-site activity that cannot be done remotely.” Given CRS management’s current position, one would expect the director to use this authority to keep the current restrictive policy. We request that you tell CRS that it is okay with you to give a more flexible telework policy a try. Such a program can be implemented slowly at first and, as the experience demonstrates its viability, become more widespread.
This perception that the Congress needs face-to-face meetings with CRS staff at a moment’s notice has also resulted in other workforce inflexibilities. These include the unwillingness to entertain the use of credit hours, denials of starting work 30 minutes earlier, an unwillingness to consider job sharing, and an overall negative opinion towards part-time work.
Labor/Management Relations
One of the questions asked in the above-mentioned Survey was “How satisfied are you with your involvement in decision that affect your work?” I believe, from employee discussions that we hear, that CRS top level management would not be judged positively on this question. Over the last few years, top level CRS management has made decisions affecting staff without staff input or buy- in. This top-down style of management has created an us versus them feeling on both sides. Staff feel that management makes its decisions unaware or unappreciative of staff concerns or professionalism. Management considers those that express their concerns as being overly resistant to change. Staff in turn feel management is uncaring or dismissive. Management responds by saying employees should be grateful to be able to work at CRS, insinuating that they are not. Management tries to address this problem with more communications. Staff perceives it more as an issue of trust and participation.
This top-down management style spills over into management’s relationship with the union. Often, the staff come to CREA to intercede and CREA has an obligation to request bargaining over those changes that adversely affect employees. But, more often than not, management resists any effort to bargain, locking us in a perpetual adversarial relationship. We would like to break this cycle. We have requested that the Director adopt a more consultative management approach, as provided for in our Collective Bargaining Agreement.
There is considerable speculation that President Obama will take steps to foster collaboration between Federal sector unions and management in the Executive Branch. We ask that when this happens members of this Subcommittee support similar actions for the Legislative Branch and, in particular, to encourage CRS management and CREA to take concrete steps to work more cooperatively.
CRS Budget Request
In addition to its request to cover mandatory increases, CRS has requested additional funding for technology enhancements. CREA supports the $500 thousand request for the purchase of network storage and switch hardware. A stated outcome of this expenditure would be to “allow staff to seamlessly continue working on critical issues during casualty situations.” We support this request. We would also note that it puts to rest another one of management’s arguments that staff cannot work from home because of security and other technical reasons. If we can do it in “casualty situations,” we can do it as a normal course of business.
CRS is also requesting $1.8 million “to modernize its research and management systems and the technical environment which supports them.” CREA cannot comment on this request because we have not been briefed on its details and do not know what impact it will have on staff. We are cautionary because recent changes in technology, or those about to take place, have had or will have consequences on staff that many employees have problems with.
We would also like to acknowledge that the increase in mandatory costs include funds to increase transit subsidies to the full amount allowed by OPM. Even so, we would like to draw your attention to a couple other employee concerns requiring relatively small amounts of funding which continue to go unattended, such as the Career Opportunity Program to improve internal upward mobility and a renewed effort to establish a student loan program to help recruit and retain talented young new hires. We ask the Subcommittee to consider encouraging CRS to support these two concerns.
Office of Opportunity, Inclusiveness, and Compliance
I would like to take just a minute to thank you for you intervention in the restructuring of the Library’s Office of Workforce Diversity, now called the Office of Opportunity, Inclusiveness, and Compliance. Because of your input, what started out to be a wholesale and immediate dismissal of staff became an orderly examination and evaluation of what was needed to carry out the mandated functions of the office and what changes the Library had to make. Even though the Library told you that the vacancy announcement for head of the office was to posted in May of 2008, the position still remains vacant. The Library must step up its effort on completing the reorganization so it can meet its legal affirmative action and discrimination complaint process obligations. The Library’s current Multi-Year Affirmative Employment Program Plan is woefully out of date.
Summary
The Workforce goal of the Library’s Strategic Plan makes a commitment to the Congress, the public, and most importantly staff, to be “an employer of choice for public service through realization of human potential and high performance.” The Library has identified how it will measure its progress in achieving this goal; yet it has failed to report how well, or how poorly it is doing.
The Subcommittee should be cautious about any conclusions drawn from the recent Federal Human Capital Survey as it was applied to the Library. The Library did not have it conducted in such a fashion that the results can help the Library achieve its goal of a model Federal employer. It should be held again, broken out by Service Unit.
And finally, it is time for CRS to exhibit a more open style of management and to make more flexible the Service work environment. Today’s younger workers have different expectations toward the work environment and new incentives must be offered to recruit and retain them. We are not keeping up with the practices of the 21st century.
Finally, the Library and CRS are largely unaccountable except to you. Library staff and CRS employees look to you to hold management to its commitments and the goals to which they have committed themselves.
This concludes my testimony and I would be happy to address any questions you may have.
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Roll Call reported on Roth’s testimony in “Union: Too Many Gaps in GPO Security.” See excerpt below:
Subcommittee members asked few questions to most of the witnesses, having heard most of it before. But they seemed irked when a union leader from the CRS testified that the agency still isn’t allowing employees to telecommute, despite the subcommittee’s request that they do so.
To push them into action, Wasserman Schultz said language may be put in the fiscal 2010 appropriations bill.
“This is 2009,” she said. “Other federal agencies seem to be able to come up with a workable policy.”