Federal unions warn cutting defense civilian personnel is sabotage

Federal employees are pushing back against a House Republican proposal to trim the defense budget by reducing the Pentagon’s civilian workforce, arguing Congress is looking in the wrong place to stanch spending.

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 250,000 employees in the Defense Department, wrote a letter to leaders of the defense appropriations subcommittees in the House and Senate on Thursday, urging them against a workforce reduction through hiring deficits in the upcoming fiscal 2024 budget.

“The problem with this approach is that actual waste is not being cut while cutting the civilian workforce will hollow out the Department’s capabilities, repeating mistakes from the past,” wrote Julie Tippens, director of AFGE’s legislative department. “Spending more money on weapon systems or force structure capabilities without the appropriate civilian support for sustainment harms readiness and lethality, increases stress on the force, and incurs additional opportunity costs, detracting from modernization.”

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subpanel, first proposed reductions to the Pentagon’s civilian workforce in 2021. Calvert said in an exclusive interview with Defense News earlier this month that these reductions “would save $125 billion over five years,” though he vowed not to fire anyone.

“Like any large business, you’ve got a 5% turnover ratio per year,” Calvert said . “So if you hire 3% instead of 5%, you get a reduction over a period of time that will have a significant impact over the bottom line. Remember, our highest cost is personnel because we have a volunteer service.”

Calvert argued that the ratio of civilian employees relative to service members is historically high. The Defense Department employs more than 830,000 civilian employees on top of 1.3 million active duty service members and slightly less than 1 million National Guard and Reserve service members, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“The next labor union that supports a reduction in workforce will be the first,” Calvert told Federal Times in a statement on Friday. “But we owe it to the American taxpayers and our men and women in uniform to find inefficiencies within the Department of Defense. A bigger bureaucracy isn’t going to deter China’s aggression in the Pacific.”

He stressed that as defense spending chairman, he’s “interested in finding savings and modernizing the operations” of the Defense Department.

This fiscal year, the federal government is expected to spend about $248 billion on civilian payroll across federal agencies, and personnel expenses are the most costly overhead for the Pentagon.

However, the AFGE letter cited a 2020 article in Foreign Affairs by current Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, in which she wrote that the department failed to find $10 billion in administrative savings through civilian workforce reductions in the five-year period between FY15 and FY19 after Congress directed it do so in FY13.

Instead, Hicks explained, the reductions “rarely succeed” in saving money because they “merely shift the work being done by civilians to others, such as military personnel or defense contractors.”

Despite Hicks’ previous skepticism of the idea, the AFGE letter stated there are “indications that the Department of Defense is likely taking the path of least resistance in developing its Fiscal Year 2024 budget by in fact instituting civilian reductions” over its Future Years Defense Program — the government’s projection of force posture, resources and programs in a five-year period.

Tippens said neither Congress nor the Pentagon looked at other sources of outsized spending, like pricing models by defense contractors or enforcement of statutory requirements for a comprehensive contract-services budget.

Her letter noted the Defense Department failed to submit a legally mandated comprehensive contract-services budget, meaning congressional funding bills “show costs for the civilian workforce but omit the costs for contractors, creating massive incentives to under-execute civilian hiring projections and shift the funds to contract services.”

AFGE likens this to “a massive slush fund for service contracts.”

Meanwhile, the Defense Department — like other federal agencies — is competing for talent against a private sector that boasts unfettered salaries and flexible work schedules.

“The Department is in danger of falling behind both the private sector and global competitors, namely China,” according to a report on the health of the civilian workforce by the Defense Business Board.

Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said he is surprised the idea was floated so openly, especially since Republicans have historically bolstered defense spending. NFFE represents 110,000 unionized government workers across agencies.

“With what is happening in Ukraine and the global implications that stem from it, this is not the time to be cutting civilian personnel at the Department of Defense,” he told Federal Times. “You cannot be for a stronger defense and against maintaining the personnel necessary to achieve it.”

House Democrats are already poised to oppose Calvert’s civilian workforce reduction proposals, and it’s unclear how the Senate would react.

“Reducing the civilian workforce doesn’t reduce any of the missions that the Department of Defense has — it just means the DoD is less equipped to complete those missions safely and successfully,” Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the House defense appropriations subcommittee, told Federal Times in a statement.

Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

联邦雇员们反对众议院共和党人提出的通过削减五角大楼文职人员来削减国防预算的提案，他们认为国会在控制开支方面找错了方向。

代表国防部 25 万名雇员的美国政府雇员联合会周四致信众议院和参议院国防拨款小组委员会的领导人，敦促他们不要在即将到来的 2024 财年预算中通过招聘赤字来削减员工人数。

美国联邦雇员联合会（AFGE）立法部门主任朱莉·蒂彭斯写道：“这种做法的问题在于，它并没有真正减少浪费，而削减文职人员只会掏空国防部的能力，重蹈覆辙。在缺乏适当的文职人员支持的情况下，将更多资金投入武器系统或部队结构能力建设，会损害战备和杀伤力，增加部队压力，并造成额外的机会成本，从而阻碍现代化进程。”

众议院拨款委员会国防小组委员会主席、加州共和党众议员肯·卡尔弗特于2021年首次提出削减五角大楼文职人员的方案。卡尔弗特本月早些时候在接受《防务新闻》独家采访时表示，这些削减“将在五年内节省1250亿美元”，但他承诺不会解雇任何人。

卡尔弗特说：“和任何大型企业一样，你们的年员工流动率是5%。所以，如果你们的员工流动率从5%降到3%，长期来看，成本的降低会对利润产生显著影响。记住，我们最大的成本是人员，因为我们依靠的是志愿者服务。”

卡尔弗特认为，文职人员与现役军人的比例处于历史高位。据国会研究服务处统计，国防部除了130万现役军人和略低于1​​00万国民警卫队及预备役军人外，还雇佣了超过83万名文职人员。

卡尔弗特周五在一份声明中告诉《联邦时报》：“下一个支持裁员的工会将是第一个。但我们有责任为美国纳税人和我们的军人找出国防部内部的低效之处。更大的官僚机构并不能阻止中国在太平洋地区的侵略行为。”

他强调，作为国防开支委员会主席，他“有兴趣寻找节省开支的方法，并实现国防部运作的现代化”。

本财政年度，联邦政府预计将在联邦机构的文职人员工资上花费约 2480 亿美元，而人事费用是五角大楼最昂贵的开支。

然而，美国联邦雇员联合会 (AFGE) 的信中引用了现任国防部副部长凯瑟琳·希克斯 (Kathleen Hicks) 于 2020 年在《外交事务》杂志上发表的一篇文章。希克斯在文章中写道，尽管国会在 2013 财年指示国防部通过裁减文职人员节省 100 亿美元的行政开支，但在 2015 财年至 2019 财年的五年期间，国防部未能做到这一点。

希克斯解释说，相反，这些削减措施“很少能成功”节省资金，因为它们“只是将原本由平民完成的工作转移到其他人身上，例如军人或国防承包商”。

尽管希克斯此前对这一想法持怀疑态度，但美国联邦雇员联合会（AFGE）的信中指出，“有迹象表明，国防部在制定 2024 财年预算时，很可能采取阻力最小的方式，实际上削减了文职人员开支”，而这与其未来几年国防计划（政府对五年内兵力部署、资源和计划的预测）有关。

蒂彭斯表示，国会和五角大楼都没有考虑过其他巨额支出来源，例如国防承包商的定价模式或全面合同服务预算的法定要求的执行情况。

她的信中指出，国防部未能提交法律规定的综合合同服务预算，这意味着国会拨款法案“列出了文职人员的成本，但忽略了承包商的成本，从而极大地刺激了文职人员招聘计划的执行力度不足，并将资金转移到合同服务上。”

美国联邦雇员联合会（AFGE）将其比作“用于服务合同的巨额秘密基金”。

与此同时，国防部和其他联邦机构一样，正在与私营部门争夺人才，私营部门提供不受限制的薪资和灵活的工作时间。

根据国防商业委员会发布的一份关于文职人员健康状况的报告，“国防部有落后于私营部门和全球竞争对手（尤其是中国）的危险”。

全国联邦雇员联合会主席兰迪·欧文表示，他对这一想法被如此公开地提出感到惊讶，尤其考虑到共和党历来都支持增加国防开支。全国联邦雇员联合会代表着各政府机构的11万名工会成员。

“鉴于乌克兰局势及其引发的全球影响，现在绝不是削减国防部文职人员的时候，”他告诉《联邦时报》。“你不能一方面支持加强国防，另一方面又反对维持实现这一目标所需的人员。”

众议院民主党人已经准备反对卡尔弗特的削减文职人员提案，目前还不清楚参议院会作何反应。

“减少文职人员并不会减少国防部的任何任务——这只是意味着国防部更难安全、成功地完成这些任务，”众议院国防拨款小组委员会首席民主党议员、来自明尼苏达州的贝蒂·麦科勒姆在一份声明中告诉《联邦时报》。

莫莉·韦斯纳是《联邦时报》的专职记者，主要报道与政府劳动力相关的劳工、政策和合同方面的新闻。她曾先后在《今日美国》和麦克拉奇报业集团担任数字内容制作人，并在《纽约时报》担任过文字编辑。莫莉毕业于北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校，主修新闻学。

布莱恩特·哈里斯是《防务新闻》的国会记者。自2014年以来，他一直在华盛顿报道美国外交政策、国家安全、国际事务和政治。他还曾为《外交政策》、《Al-Monitor》、《半岛电视台英语频道》和IPS新闻撰稿。