Show where your taxes go how uncle sam spends your money in conducting your business by ED EDWARD WARD G LOWRY author anthor ba chum ch cewe UM up bink ind td etc t contributor CW butr politic bcd ocd d roa s abid to t 1 alg carlod b and 1 writer of r Auth anthonty ontY on th nations barina Buffi nets Ut thod C copyright W western tr t r duclon VIEW OF THE EMPLOYEE the obvious solution of the lie governments employment problem Is the standardization and readjustment of salaries to be scientific such readjustment must rest upon a careful reclassification of the service conditions are arc very different now both in regard to the functions of offices and the cost of living from what they wore were when positions in the government bervice sen ice were first classified and salaries assigned to those positions it struck me that an interested party in this inquiry into how the government conducts its business was the employee himself he ought to know from actual dally daily experience something about the mechanism of the national business find and the relations between the working force and employer it was clearly impossible to talk to the more than men and women who work for the government but I 1 learned that between and GO CO of them are banded together in an association called the national federation of federal employees it Is a regular labor union and is affiliated with the american federation of labor it includes all classes of government workers technical and scientific men as well as clerks and kUld workers I 1 asked the president of this employees plo union luther 0 steward if he and his associates were authorized to speak for all its membership he assured me that they were so I 1 asked him to tell me about the conditions of government employment and how the business was carried on I 1 am glad I 1 did for what he told me discloses not only facts but a state of mind existing among the employees which necessarily must be taken into account in any ally consideration of the efficiency and management of our common business here then is what the employees who speak through mr SteN steward Aard have to say and the constructive program they present for the improvement of the service the civil service on its human side consists of about men and women engaged in the operation of an antiquated patched up machine because of the durability of its vital parts and the faith and ability of the mass of the operatives the machine still functions but the parts are ill fitted and many of them are defective fec tive the managers and superintendents ten dents of the establishment being too often chosen choen for political reasons are frequently inexpert and the operating system Is clumsy and disjointed the employees are recruited under a law which provides a test of qualifications and probably nine tenths of the rank and file have satisfactorily passed the entrance test but the better positions say from upward are occupied by political appointees another considerable group of employees get their appointments by executive order waiving elvil civil service tests of fitness the newcomer in the service therefore finds himself up against a minimum of opportunity for promotion with nith the disheartening knowledge that the advancement which Is earned by competence Is all too likely to be given to the friend or political 61 supporter of some congressman or executive who gislie to pay a political debt and the employee Is subject to dismissal at the will of the executive of af his department part ment unless he can bring sufficient lelent political influence to bear in other words the civil service law I 1 Is not backed up by enforcing power in 1 I tile alie civil service commission it 1 merely recruits the applicants for entrance I 1 thereafter the employees fate Is largely a matter of his own luck and negative passive merit there Is no system by which he be may be fitted to the job and no protection against dismissal unless the employee I 1 himself can show that the reason Is I 1 political or religious for the good of the service as the law reads covers every other charge which the executive official may bring there Is no court of appeal such is the oppressive Incentive less I 1 i vit vitiating lating atmosphere of the government I 1 service it stifles initiative frustrates ambitions and reduces the muss mass of employees to a more or less passive state which Is permeated by a sense of fear in such an atmosphere naturally enough the physical conditions of employment are far from what they should be and the government loses efficiency as does any other emalu employer where the wage scale is inadequate and where sanitary I 1 conditions are bad and hours of work too long and irregular the wage scale Is so low that the civil service commission has difficulty in securing properly qualified app applicants I 1 and throughout the service the turnover Is high employees doing the same saine kind of work often receive widely different rates of pay experienced perien ced workers often receive less lehs than beginners and virtually every und of inequality and injustice exists |