Author: Douglas Shuit

Cari M. Dominguez is unlikely to inspire fear. First there’s the winningsmile. She looks every bit the cheerful soccer mom that she is, and not at allthe fire-breathing federal regulator one would expect of the head of the EqualEmployment Opportunity Commission.

But appearances and perceptions are important. And her image is very much onher mind as she heads off to meet with 250 human resources executives andbusiness leaders at a conference in Palm Springs. Her task is to reach out tothe business community, and to dispel the stereotype of herself as EEOC’s topcop. “Somebody said to me they were expecting the chair of the commission tobe an angry person. That she’d be angry and mad at the world,” theCuban-born executive says. She laughs at the thought. “That’s just not me.”

As she moves through the day, the conference provides constant reminders ofthe edgy world that the EEOC occupies enforcing civil-rights andjob-discrimination laws. Here in the conference hall of a resort hotel, job talktakes on the language of war. “Vital weapons for your employment-law arsenal,”one seminar advertises. Another warns of the “Perfect Storm,” a movie-titlemetaphor conjuring up legal threats with images of towering waves andhurricane-force winds powerful enough to swamp any corporate ship. There areeven warnings that human resources executives could face prison time, the resultof the recent Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, designed to cut down on white-collarcrime and improper accounting practices. At one of the briefings, Towers Perrinconsultant Paula Todd tells a room packed to overflowing, “Yes, you as HRdirector could go to jail.” The executives collectively snap to attention.

Jail for human resources people? Not if Cari Dominguez can help it. She’sthe first EEOC chief with a workforce-management background, and she’s on theroad to sell a kinder, gentler, more proactive image of the EEOC. What’s more,she’s attacking the job with the tenacity of someone who has been trying tosmash glass ceilings holding down women and minorities for most of her life.

As she approaches the end of her second year as the EEOC’s top cop, anassessment of her record reveals that she has made notable progress in speedingup the settlement of cases. But it is her outreach program that likely willestablish her legacy. Her message: Corporations should wise up and do the rightthing. And she wants to deliver the idea as a partner, not an adversary.Critics, however, wonder if she’s moving too close to employers, compromisingher role as prosecutor. And employers appear wary of the message she is bringingthem.

Referring to the way that many businesses view the EEOC, Southern Californiaattorney Eric Sohlgren of the law firm of Payne & Fears–a name thatunderstandably has become fodder for Jay Leno jokes–offers this summation. “Ourclients generally are going to be reluctant to call the EEOC for advice.”

The agency’s chief is undaunted. “I know what you’re thinking,”Dominguez tells the executives at the outset of her keynote address, going for alaugh. “Gee, whiz, it’s the job police.” Her green eyes sparkle as theypeer out at the audience, her sensible short brown hair and soft St. Johnbusiness suit a marked contrast to the harsh, often adversarial world of theEEOC.

Much progress made
    If the goal of the EEOC is to eliminate workforce discrimination, thenDominguez, a Republican appointed by President George W. Bush, knows she needshelp. Decades after the agency was created to enforce the Civil Rights Act of1964, a record number of charges are being filed against employers.African-Americans still file the largest number of discrimination charges. Butworkers filing sexual-harassment charges, Muslims targeted by bigots after the9/11 attacks, and white males complaining of reverse discrimination are alsostanding up and demanding employer accountability.

During the 2002 budget year, the EEOC under Dominguez took in 84,442 newallegations of discrimination–a 4.5 percent increase over the previous year.Attacking a traditional problem area–disposing of its case backlog–the EEOCresolved 95,222 cases in the same year, a 12-month increase of 6 percent.Businesses paid out $310.5 million in settlements and awards to injured workerslast year.

All of this has been accomplished despite a series of internal stresses tothe EEOC. Until Congress stepped in, the agency had faced a budget crisis thatthreatened a temporary layoff of all of its nearly 2,800 employees without payfor up to 18 days. A budget-augmentation bill ended the crisis last month. Evenso, there is a hiring freeze. Until recently, the agency has been operating withvacancies in two of its five commission seats. There have been only twocommission meetings since Dominguez took over in the summer of 2001. Thepermanent job of general counsel, a presidential appointment, still remainsunfilled.

David Grinberg, a spokesman, says the commission vacancies have had noimpact on its performance. “We are operating at the most efficient level inhistory,” he says. Vacancies, he adds, are not uncommon on the EEOC. “Itcertainly doesn’t hinder the work of the commission.”

Despite the success in dealing with the EEOC’s backlog, the internalproblems have given the impression to some that the EEOC is not one of the Bushadministration’s priorities. Attorney Gabrielle Martin, president of the National Council ofEEOC Locals No. 216, which represents 950 EEOC employees, contends, “CariDominguez is very, very concerned about being responsive to the president’smanagement agenda.” That, to Martin, means slowing down EEOC business,outsourcing work, and restructuring the agency in a way that she fears will notbe favorable to workers.

The source of some of Martin’s concern is a study by the National Academyof Public Administration commissioned by Dominguez. One of its recommendationsis to establish a national call center so people can make charges over thephone, rather than go into an office. Another proposal urges the agency to makebetter use of the Internet and to close some of its 51 field offices, whererents are rising rapidly. The study also says that the EEOC is operating withoutdated 20th-century technology.

Though change is in the air, Martin complains that Dominguez is telegraphingfew of her moves. “It’s like being in a dark cave,” she says. “You haveno idea what it will be like coming out, but you have this feeling in the pit ofyour stomach that it won’t be good.”

Dominguez, meanwhile, presses forward with her initiative to reach out tobusiness leaders as well as critics.

Referring to her boss’s style, Joan Ehrlich, a congressional liaison andthe EEOC’s acting communications director, says it’s a top-down approach.”It is directed primarily at top management personnel, urging them to beproactive in maintaining a workforce free of discrimination. We will litigate ifwe have to, but we can’t be everywhere all the time. We need to get CEOs onboard.”

A pilot program is under way in Pennsylvania in which discrimination chargesfiled with the EEOC are referred back to an employer’s in-housedispute-resolution program. The program, involving Fortune 500 companies, isstrictly voluntary. If a dispute is not resolved satisfactorily, then the EEOCwill process the charge in the traditional manner. The program addresses one ofcorporate America’s criticisms of the EEOC–its glacial speed. The businessworld wants to see discrimination cases, which can seem to drag on forever,resolved quickly.

The push to rapidly resolve cases “is a subject of concern,” says HilaryShelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau. “The responsibility andcharge of the EEOC is to be fair to business, but to be an advocate foremployees.” He fears that legitimate complaints may get overlooked in therush.

The 54-year-old Dominguez, a woman with highly developed political skills,takes the observations in stride. “Anything we do, we get good and badreactions,” she says. “Some groups say you are overreaching, some groups sayyou are not reaching far enough. You hope you are somewhere in the middle.”

Using a carrot-and-stick approach
    When she was appointed EEOC chief midway through 2001, Dominguez brought withher a solid background of government work. She had served as assistant secretaryof labor under President George H.W. Bush–with added experience in the privatesector as a human resources executive and consultant. She is the firstnon-attorney and human resources executive to serve as chair of the EEOC, andthat gives her instant credibility with the business sector.

She says the reaction she got at one company is typical. “I asked them, ‘Whenyou received a call that the chair of the EEOC wanted to meet with you, what wasyour response?’ They said they were panic-stricken. Terrified. They wondered,‘Do we return the call? Do we give it to our lawyer?’ So I realized that theneedle was way over here,” she says with a sweep of her arm, indicating thatthe reaction was off the chart. She says the EEOC won’t back off its role asenforcer of civil-rights law, but adds, “Day in, day out, you need to havemore interaction with the people who actually do the hiring and the firing andgive the promotions and cash awards. I don’t want them to see us as a cop. Iwant them to see us as a workplace partner.”

Dominguez is convinced she can wield both a carrot and a stick inher relationships with business.

For now, Dominguez is convinced she can wield both a carrot and a stick inher relationships with business. To see her in action is to see the qualitiesthat propelled her to the top and made her one of the most influential Latinasin the country. She has the easy style of someone who has spent much of her worklife in the fishbowl of government service.

As an immigrant confronted by language barriers, cultural differences, andfinancial struggles when her family moved her from Havana to the United Statesas a 12-year-old, Dominguez knows what it’s like to fight for a seat at thebig boys’ table. When she talks about maintaining a level playing field forall workers, she speaks as a daughter who watched both parents fight their ownworkplace battles. Her father, an accountant in Cuba, was forced to work as abusboy and at other manual-labor jobs when he was a new immigrant. Early in hercareer, Dominguez recalls, she interceded after her mother complained of beingpassed over for promotion at her hospital job.

“My mother had a very thick accent,” Dominguez says. “And so she wouldtrain people who would be promoted. She kept training people and she would bepassed over. I had to write a letter and say, ‘You know, there is somethingwrong with this picture. For what she does, do you have to have perfectinflection?’” Her mother got a raise.

Both of her parents are now dead, but family life and religion still playprominent roles in her life. She dotes on her husband, Alberto, a top humanrelations executive with American Express, and two school-age sons, Adam andJason. She finds making time for her boys a challenge, but one she happilyassumes. “I don’t miss any of their ballgames, be it soccer, basketball,whatever,” she says. She still gets up early and makes lunch for her youngerson, then drives from her suburban Gaithersburg, Maryland, home to her office inWashington. Once she’s in the city, a driver takes her to appointments, butshe has few of the trappings of the rich and powerful.

“She is not the kind of person who operates behind a closed door. You don’thave to go through layers of people to see her,” says Ehrlich, aself-described liberal Democrat who nonetheless has been given a high-profilejob by Dominguez.

At 14, Dominguez got a job cleaning dorms and restrooms and performing otherhousekeeping work at Columbia Union College, affiliated with the Seventh-dayAdventist Church, of which she is an active member. She is a founding member ofan Adventist school.

Growing up in an immigrant household influenced her work in several ways, shesays. “I learned that two of the most important things we have are freedom andopportunity. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom to compete inthe workplace, on a level playing field.” As an insulin-dependent diabetic,Dominguez is also sensitive to problems of the disabled. (Coincidentally, theEEOC recently filed charges against an employer for firing a diabetic employeewho gave himself an insulin shot while at work.)

Her road to a public-service career began at American University, aWashington, D.C., college with tough academic standards. Aiming for a career inthe foreign service, she earned a master’s degree in international relations.Instead, she took a job with the Labor Department, then landed with the Bank ofAmerica in San Francisco, where she held various human resources positions,responsible for succession planning, executive staffing, and diversityinitiatives. She considered the bank’s hiring and promotion policiesprogressive, but realized that women in some categories could go only so farbefore they hit a glass ceiling.

“If it was so bad at a progressive company, I wondered what it was likeelsewhere,” she says. So she set about to change that, and did it with sucheffectiveness that then Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole recruited her during theearlier Bush administration. She was the architect of the Labor Department’sGlass Ceiling Initiative in the early 1990s, a campaign designed to removeinvisible barriers from the workplace and known for slogans like “the ‘fair-hairedboy’ in your organization might be a woman.”

During the Clinton administration, Dominguez went back to the private sector,ran her own management consulting firm, Dominguez & Associates, in Maryland,and held top management positions at two executive search firms, Spencer Stuartand Heidrick & Struggles. Given her background, she knew that when Bushappointed her to a five-year term to run the EEOC, she faced a full plate ofchallenges–dealing with thousands of new charges every year; contentiousplaintiff’s attorneys on one side, lawyers for employers on the other; andCivil Service culture within the agency. For now, she seems to be breaking downwalls.

“When she says she’s interested in the views of interested parties andstakeholders, she really means that,” says Deborah Greenfield, a top AFL-CIOlawyer. “When we feel we have something important to discuss with her, shelistens to us and thinks carefully about what we’ve said. It’s not justwindow dressing with her. It’s listening and incorporating divergentviewpoints.”

Dennis J. Garritan, head of human resources for The Witan Group, says he hadcome hating to do business with the EEOC because it was run by lawyers. “Yougo to the barber, you get a haircut; you have an attorney running the EEOC, youget litigation. That’s what they do. That’s the way they deal with theworld,” Garritan says. “Cari is a businessperson. She is an HR person. She’sone of us.”

Workforce, May 2003, pp. 26-32 — Subscribe Now!

Taking paid time away from work for baby bonding or to care for a sick parentmight delight your pediatrician or preacher, but the very concept makes membersof the business community crabby and colicky. How about calling it what it is,they grumble: job killer.

Legislators in California have given the nation its first paid family leavelaw, a controversial antidote to the mushrooming problem that workers face injuggling family and workplace responsibilities. If the idea spreads, topmanagement and HR executives will be dealing with issues such as: Replacing moreworkers on temporary leave; higher administrative costs; privacy issues; threatsof lawsuits, and increased future costs as the benefit is increased.

Under California’s new law, 13 million workers will be eligible to receivehalf pay for six weeks for a variety of personal reasons, from tending to anewborn infant to moving a parent into a nursing home. Payments will come from apayroll tax, but employers are up in arms because they face significant newlegal and administrative costs and must pay and train replacement workers. Asfor HR professionals in other states, the problem may not be yours–yet. Thecoalition of labor unions, family advocates, and others that worked hard inCalifornia for the family bill has efforts under way in nearly 30 other states.

You might call the new family-friendly leave plan–known as Family TemporaryDisability Insurance–FMLA on steroids.

You might call the new family-friendly leave plan–known as Family TemporaryDisability Insurance–FMLA on steroids. Once implemented in 2004, the FTDIlegislation promises to come on with a vengeance, critics say. Moreover, with abig win in California, the national coalition that supports paid leave forworkers who take time away from their jobs to care for ill parents or familymembers might gain traction in other states.

Supporters of the measure–labor unions, advocates for children and seniors,church groups, and numerous other organizations–provided the political muscleneeded to get the legislation through a divided legislature. They argue thatpaid family leave is necessary to keep pace with a changing workforce. Thereality of the American family today is that both moms and dads commonly work,there are large numbers of single parents, and working-age adults are helping tocare for ever-increasing numbers of older parents.

In signing the bill in September, Governor Gray Davis declared, “Californiansshould never have to make the choice between being good workers and being goodparents. This bill will make it easier for Californians to help their loved onesthrough a health crisis without going broke in the process.”

The bill was enacted over the opposition of the California Chamber ofCommerce, the California Manufacturers and Technology

Association, and other business groups that portrayed the family leavelegislation as a “job killer” because it will create an even moreinhospitable business climate, which is often blamed for the flight ofmanufacturing jobs out of the state. California business leaders predict thefamily leave program will become a full-employment act for lawyers and a majorheadache for HR professionals. They contend that it will multiply the legalproblems they are already experiencing under the federal FMLA. They also fearthat it will place a tremendous burden on employers with fewer than 50employees, which have been exempted from FMLA but now are included in theCalifornia program.

Workers have already shown that they are willing to take time off without payunder FMLA, and it is feared that the added incentive of replacing 55 percent oftheir pay will open the floodgates. “This bill will cause a significantproblem for employers,” says

Gino DiCaro, spokesman for the California Manufacturers and TechnologyAssociation. “Absenteeism already is one of the larger costs a manufacturercan incur. It’s a certainty that a large portion of the workforce will takeadvantage of it, especially when they are paying for it.”

The law builds on FMLA in a number of significant ways. FMLA provides for 12weeks of unpaid leave, and it’s up to the worker to cobble together enoughdisability insurance, when applicable, vacation, sick time, and savings to getby. California’s FTDI will make up more than half of a worker’s wages forsix weeks. The payments will be free of taxes. FMLA limits coverage tobusinesses with 50 or more employees; FTDI includes businesses of all sizes.Eligibility for FMLA requires a year on the job and 1,250 hours in the previous12 months; eligibility for FTDI begins immediately upon employment, after aseven-day waiting period.

Workers are expected to take advantage of the new program in far greaternumbers. Although 35 million Americans have taken leavesunder FMLA, one federal study estimated that 20 percent of those eligible forleave did not take it because they couldn’t afford losing a paycheck.

Many of those who have taken FMLA leave were forced to turn to publicassistance to make ends meet. Because such large numbers of FMLA leave-takersturn to public assistance, California could save as much as $25 million inreduced welfare payments, supporters say. “All too often, people who takeunpaid leave end up suffering unbelievable economic hardships. That can includegoing on public assistance, taking out second and third mortgages, andbankruptcy,” says Jodi Grant, director of work and family programs for theNational Partnership for Women and Families.

Still, the program will cost $78 million in the first year, rising to $117million in the second. The money will come from the disability fund financed bya new payroll tax. About 13 million workers– roughly one-third of the state’spopulation–who are now paying disability insurance, will see an increase intheir DI payments. But countless millions more, represented by their children,parents, and family members, will be beneficiaries of the new law.

The program will be administered by the state Employment DevelopmentDepartment, which is in the process of drafting regulations in anticipation ofthe program’s 2004 start-up.

This is how FTDI works. Beginning January 1, 2004, all employees paying intothe state disability insurance fund will pay an average of $27 a year inadditional payroll deductions into the Family Temporary Disability Fund. Workersmay begin withdrawing money from the fund six months later, beginning July 1,2004. Payments will range from $50 to $728 a week, indexed to increases in theaverage annual wage. Contributions into the fund will be paid 100 percent byemployees, which supporters say minimizes the cost to employers.

Eligibility will essentially overlap FMLA. But in a key departure, once theprogram gets going, workers will be eligible for leave immediately, exempt fromthe 12-month qualifying period required under the federal program. Just likeFMLA, the California program provides time off for new parents and also allowsworkers to take time off to care for a sick or injured family member or domesticpartner.

Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the new law to business leaders is theloss of the FMLA exemption for businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Thesesmaller firms, which have no experience dealing with the FMLA, will facesignificant new costs in complying with the California law, critics say. Theyare expected to find it more costly to replace and train workers to fill thejobs of absent workers, and additional legal and paperwork problems may havethem running for the aspirin.

Attorney Michael Lotito, a partner in the law firm Jackson Lewis in SanFrancisco, already has held one seminar for HR executives on California’s law.Three hundred anxious benefits professionals signed up. “Just thinking aboutit is a nightmare,” Lotito says. “This is so unbelievably complex thatsupporters who say it isn’t going to cost employers anything are crazy.”

He predicts that many firms will outsource administration of the program tospecialty firms. “There is going to be a real issue in setting up a humanresource structure,” he says. “The people who are going to benefit the mostare temporary agencies, because temps are going to have to be hired to fillvacancies.”

One of the knotty problems to be worked out involves job protection. UnderFMLA, workers taking unpaid leave are promised that they can return to the jobthey left or one equal to it. The California program contains the same jobprotections for firms of 50 or more, but offers no job protection for workers atsmaller firms. Plaintiffs’ lawyers may challenge that, arguing that there isan implied promise that an employee granted leave will have a job when he or shegets back. Consider the touchy issue of the employer that holds a job open forone employee but not another. Would filling a job left vacant by a person takingfamily leave violate the law against unlawful retaliation, since a legal rightis being exercised?

And HR executives say privacy issues may create another legal land mine. Willworkers have to fill out a detailed form listing family members and domesticpartners in the event that they will have to provide care for them?

The law setting uppaid family leave makes it a criminal offense to file a false claim, but to whatlengths will a company or the state go to check out potential fraudulent claims?

A provision of California’s law says workers cannot take family leave tocare for a sick family member if another member of the family is available atthe same time. Already some wonder how thoroughly an employer or state workercan investigate the availability of other family members. The law setting uppaid family leave makes it a criminal offense to file a false claim, but to whatlengths will a company or the state go to check out potential fraudulent claims?Under the current unemployment insurance program, employers can contest claims.What happens under the new system if an employer learns something about apossible fraudulent claim? Can it be contested?

“There is no question this is a full-employment act for labor employmentlawyers,” Lotito says. “This will give plaintiffs’ lawyers anotheropportunity to create additional causes of action. The cost to employers isvery, very significant.”

So far, many HR professionals have adopted a wait-and-see approach. Alreadyfaced with problems stemming from the implementing regulations issued on FMLA bythe U.S. Department of Labor, HR professionals shudder to think about additionalproblems created by California’s version of family leave. Eleven differentregulations implementing FMLA have been challenged in 58 suits filed in federalcourts, according to a study presented to Congress in April by the Kansas Citylaw firm Spencer Fane Britt & Browne.

Kenneth A. Buback, vice president of human resources for Sutter Health, whichoperates a chain of hospitals in Northern California, testified before Congresson behalf of the Society for Human Resource Management about “paperworkinflation” resulting from FMLA implementing regulations put out by theDepartment of Labor. He complained that the Department of Labor’sinterpretations of FMLA were vague and contradictory, and created a burden onhis Sacramento-based hospital chain that was driving up costs. He said anincreasing number of lawsuits challenging FMLA regulations are expected.

Buback praises the intent of California’s FTDI. “I think it’s a goodpiece of legislation in that it is family friendly,” he says. “Overall, weneed to be more responsive to work/family issues and bring them more intobalance.”

But he wants to withhold judgment until he has seen how the state implementsthe California program. “It’s so new, and because it won’t take effectuntil 2004, we are still waiting to see how this will play out,” Buback says.He is troubled by FMLA’s track record. “It would be great to fix what wehave.”

Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce, led theunsuccessful fight to defeat the bill, which was authored by state senatorSheila Kuehl.

Opponents were able to get some amendments. Originally, the bill was to haveprovided 12 weeks of paid leave. Kuehl agreed to reduce that number to six.Employees and employers originally were going to make equal contributions to thefund. Employees now will make 100 percent of the contributions. Those amendmentssoftened the blow, but the legislation “is still horrible for small business,”Zaremberg says.

Paperwork is another concern. So are lawsuits. “Small business just can’tafford litigation,” Zaremberg continues.

In any case, there are mountains of work ahead. HR executives will have toreview policies on leave. Supervisors will have to be educated. Employees willhave to be notified of their new rights. Regulations formulated by the stateEmployment Development Department will have to be tracked.

Other countries even more generous
    As new and burdensome as it may seem, paid family leave is a core benefit forworkers in most of the rest of the world. The United States is one of only threeindustrialized nations that do not provide paid family leave. Employees in manyother countries work under family policies that are even more liberal than thosebeing implemented in California.

In Norway, parents are entitled to 42 weeks of leave at 100 percent pay or 52weeks at 80 percent pay. Norway places such great emphasis on involving fathersin the care of their children that penalties are imposed if they don’t takeleave. The California law mirrors a program in Canada. Australia, which is alsowrestling with paid leave, found in a study of its trading partners that NewZealand is implementing a program funded by social security–12 weeks of paidleave for both women and men. China, Korea, Malaysia,

Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia require employers to pay for maternityleave. In Thailand, the employer pays full wages for 45 days, and then socialsecurity kicks in to pay 50 percent.

In the United States, a question on many minds is whether paid family leavewill spread to other states. Supporters of paid leave have introduced proposalsin 28 states. So far, California is the only one to have passed a paid-leaveprogram. And even then, voting broke along party lines, with majority-partyDemocrats providing all the aye votes. In the state senate, the bill passed witha bare 21-vote majority, usually a sign that some party members begged to stayoff the roll call.

Even so, passage of the law was a big win for labor, which led the fight inCalifornia and is mounting campaigns in other states. The victory came at a timewhen employers have been scaling back health insurance, pensions, and otherbenefits. Some see the action by the California legislature as evidence thatworkers may increasingly be looking to government, rather than employers, toshore up benefits.

“This bucks the trend. The citizens of California took it into their ownhands because they saw they were not getting this out of their own companies,”says Karen Nussbaum, assistant to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and longtimeadvocate for paid family leave. She believes that passage of paid family leavewill have “enormous consequences” for the rest of the nation.

“It is the first big victory on paid leave since the family leave waspassed by Congress in 1993,” Nussbaum says. “People trying to balance workand family life are just stressed to their limits. We see it as a fundamentalcore issue.”

That California proved to be fertile ground for advocates of paid familyleave should not be surprising. The state legislature over the years has beenout front in passing tough air-pollution standards, legislating overtime basedon an 8-hour workday rather than a 40-hour week, and creating worker-friendlyergonomics standards to deal with repetitive-stress injuries.

But other states have often been reluctant to follow California’s lead. Thestate of Washington considered a paid-leave program, but backed away. MarilynWatkins, economic security and tax policies director of Seattle-based EconomicOpportunity Institute, predicts the issue will catch on and ultimately spreadbeyond California. “Our polling found good support across political lines,gender lines, regional lines. There is very strong public support for paidleave,” Watkins says.

As in California, business lobbied heavily against it, and there was adivided legislature. The bill died.

Deanna Gelak, executive director of the National FMLA Technical CorrectionsCoalition in Springfield, Virginia, says she’s concerned that California issending the wrong message to employers. The California law raises “a host ofprivacy concerns, not to mention the monstrous bureaucracy that will be requiredto track this leave.”

Reports that paid leave “is spreading like wildfire are greatly overrated,”she adds. “The California approach is extremely controversial and unique.” 

Workforce, January 2003, pp. 38-42 — Subscribe Now!

It’s the mother of all HR assignments: Take a workforce of 170,000, nowworking in 22 established federal government agencies, and fit them under thesame roof. That’s exactly the task that Tom Ridge, designated HomelandSecurity secretary, faces as he oversees the largest governmental reorganizationin more than 50 years.

    Perhaps fittingly, workplace issues took center stage in the weeks leading upto final passage in November of the Homeland Security Act, which established thenew cabinet-level department. President Bush had hoped to have the legislationenacted in time for the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Thatdidn’t happen. A stalemate over workplace issues took center stage inwrangling between Republicans and Democrats, and the squabbling sometimesovershadowed the bill’s urgent mission: to establish an agency to coordinateprotection of the nation’s borders and prevent future terrorist attacks.

    Bush at one point threatened to veto the entire package unless it contained anew personnel framework with enough flexibility to promote and fire employees asneeded. Then he swept aside union opposition and got the bill he wanted whenRepublicans took control of both the House and Senate in the November elections.

    As Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) puts it, Bush needs “the ability to shiftresources, including personnel, at the blink of an eye.” Miller complains thatunder the old system, it “takes five months to hire a new employee and morethan a year to fire a bad one.”

    The new agency will be responsible for border security, emergency preparedness, biological warfare, intelligence analysis,and protection of the President himself. Expertise to carry out the missionalready exists, but counter-terrorism programs are fragmented throughout thegovernment. Bush administration officials now face the daunting task of pullingthe scattered pieces together and making it all work. It could take years to getthe department fully integrated, experts say.HR professionals should pay closeattention to some of the new personnel rules. Under the new setup, the Bushadministration will be able to waive Civil Service collective-bargaining rightsif direct negotiations with unions fail to yield agreement and the federalmediation service is unable to resolve the dispute. The Homeland Security Actalso creates a new senior-level position of chief human capital officer.

    “Many private sector companies have the same position–a senior-levelofficer in charge of training and upgrading the skills of the workforce,” saysCynthia Pantazis, director of policy and public leadership for the AmericanSociety for Training and Development, which called for creation of the newoffice during congressional hearings. “What this does is ratchet up theimportance of human capital,” Pantazis says.

    Some of the changes have been debated for decades. Constance Horner, a guestscholar at the Brookings Institution and former director of the U.S. Office ofPersonnel Management, says she and others in the Reagan administration tried butfailed to win congressional support for more flexibility in work rules. “Ittook an act of terrorism to induce change,” she says.

Workforce, January 2003, p. 15 — Subscribe Now!