Plight of the "1039" employee

[Bob Valen]

By Joe Davidson, Washington Post
Wednesday, June 30, 2010

With all of the right jabs aimed at the pay of federal employees in
recent weeks, you might not realize the lengths Uncle Sam will go to
avoid fully compensating some members of his staff.

Among those are staffers with the infamous "1039 appointments."

These workers, often in the lower pay grades, serve Sam faithfully,
year after year after year, but only for 1,039 hours a year. That's
one hour short of six months, and it allows Sam to classify them as
temporary employees. And that means they don't get fringe benefits and
certainly have no job security.

Congress will consider their plight at a hearing Wednesday before the
House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the federal
workforce.

Subcommittee members will hear about situations like those confronting
Lawrence Shippen and Susan Forbes, whom we wrote about in January.

Shippen has worked for the Forest Service in California for about 20
years, but just under six months at a time. His temporary status
leaves him without health insurance, so he doesn't get his weak
hearing checked or his bad teeth fixed.

"It's really an abuse they are perpetrating on all the temporaries,"
he said.

Forbes is now a full-time Forest Service employee and has benefits.
But she was a temp for 12 years. That time doesn't count toward her
retirement, which she thinks about a lot now that she's approaching
that age. Without credit for that period, she thinks she'll have to
work until she is 70.

"I don't think I could make it on what I have in there now," she
said.

The subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), will
look at cases like these and others in which employees feel cheated
out of certain benefits because of a temporary job status that in some
cases continues for decades.

"For some of the federal workers we represent in the U.S. Forest
Service, temporary has lasted more than 30 years," William R. Dougan,
president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in
testimony prepared for the hearing.

Though Sam strives to be a model employer, and in many ways he is,
Dougan said conditions of employment for temporary federal workers are
"as bad as those provided by any employer. They receive no health
insurance benefits, no life insurance benefits, no retirement
benefits, no step increases and no competitive standing for internal
placement into career jobs."

Hank Kashdan, associate chief of the Forest Service, said in his
prepared testimony that "having temporary workers provides needed
flexibility to manage our workload and our employees, both temporary
and permanent."

The National Park Service also uses temps and finds them to be very
helpful. Temps "allow us to address peak workload periods," Jerry
Simpson, the Park Service's associate director for workforce
management, said in his prepared testimony.

But he also acknowledged that "it is possible for an individual to
hold multiple temporary appointments, sometimes in a single year, and
create a situation in which, by moving from temporary job to temporary
job, she or he is essentially working 'full time' and 'year round,'
but not receiving the benefits of permanent federal employment. It is
similarly possible for an employee to be readily rehired year after
year, into the same seasonal job, if they so desire."

"Though the work may be truly seasonal in nature, the temporary
employee can in effect become a 'long-term' employee without long-term
benefits," Simpson said.

Simpson recalled the case of James Hudson, a Vietnam vet and a full-
time temporary employee who suffered a fatal heart attack while
cleaning the Lincoln Memorial on July 4, 1993, after working three
shifts over two days. Although he had eight years on the job, his
family was not entitled to a pension or to government-subsidized
health or life insurance benefits.

But thanks to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Congress provided
$38,400 for his family, the amount they would have received in life
insurance had he been a permanent employee.

In response to his death, the Office of Personnel Management revised
rules affecting temps in 1994. In her prepared statement, Angela
Bailey, OPM's deputy associate director for recruitment and diversity,
said the revisions were needed "in order to ensure that temporary
appointments will be used for truly short-term hiring needs and to
avoid the perception by employees that temporary employment could last
indefinitely."

But their perception, based on reality and years of personal
experiences, is just the opposite.