WASHINGTON-The union representing Federal Communications Commission employees has accused Chairman Reed Hundt of reneging on a staff reduction plan agreed to by labor and management earlier this year that required forced layoffs.
Under a proposal unveiled last month by Hundt, 50 employees from FCC field and regional offices around the United States would be discharged as part of an effort to cut staffing by 10 percent next year. The agency is authorized for 2,271 employees; the downsizing would reduce that number to 2,050.
Another 130 employees from those offices, which trouble-shoot interference problems and perform other enforcement duties, would depart via buyouts and early retirements.
“It is Chapter 209’s opinion that where a field location is proposed for closing that those employees should be given an opportunity for reassignment to other offices of the Commission before any involuntary separations are ordered,” said Allen Myers, president of the FCC union and a communications industry analyst in the Audio Services Division of the agency’s Mass Media Bureau.
Myers, in an Aug. 21 memo to workers, said Hundt in April supported a plan negotiated by the employee union and Beverly Baker, chief of the FCC’s Compliance and Information Bureau, that would have closed only the Miami and Buffalo field offices and shut down nine monitoring stations without any involuntary reduction in force, or RIFs.
This was to be accomplished, according to Myers, through buyouts ($25,000 pre-tax), the early-out program and reassignment of field personnel to offices that stay open.
“We expected it to be carried out this way,” said Myers.
Robert Peck, an FCC lawyer, said Hundt did not have a formal deal with the labor union and had to make changes in July after the House froze FCC spending for fiscal 1996 at this year’s $185.2 million level. The Clinton administration requested $223.6 million for the FCC in fiscal 1996, which begins Oct. 1.
Fast-paced growth in the telecommunications industry has increased the agency’s workload in recent years. The prospect of Congress passing telecommunications reform legislation could add to that burden.
Hundt’s revised proposal was not revealed to Myers or the other four FCC commissioners until shortly before the chairman briefed reporters on Aug. 17.
Commissioners James Quello criticized the plan; other commissioners have requested more information.
The personnel reduction initiative is now before the full commission. The closing of field and regional offices requires congressional approval.
“I’m in support of the chairman,” said Baker. But, she added, “It’s not easy, it’s very tough because of the impact on peoples’ lives.”
Baker said the decision to layoff employees for the first time in FCC history rather than forgo infrastructure upgrades represents a fundamental shift in the agency’s approach to spending.
In the past, she explained, employees were protected and improvements to FCC facilities were put off as a result of budgetary constraints. That is now changed, and Baker predicted additional staffing cuts, including some in the FCC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, which escaped unscathed under Hundt’s proposal.
Staffing, however, would be shifted among bureaus at FCC headquarters. The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau could receive 10 to 12 extra employees.
The FCC, Baker pointed out, began to phase out rotary dial telephones as recently as 1990 and only in the past year did e-mail and voice mail arrive at the independent regulatory agency. She said the FCC needs the tools of modern technology to make employees more productive and to make FCC oversight of the telecommunications industry more efficient and effective.
Insofar as facility improvements, the FCC wants to invest $20 million in increased computerization in coming years. Hundt said the commission needs $25 million if it moves its headquarters to a new complex in the nation’s capital, called The Portals, in 1997.
“When a decision must be made between buying new equipment and retaining loyal employee, the loyal employees must come first,” said Myers.
Nine of 16 field offices, staffed with engineers, public affairs specialists and clerks totalling between five and 10 each, will be shut down.
However, the commission will retain two technical specialists as “resident agents” in each of the nine locations where field offices are closed.
Three of six FCC regional offices also will close down. A national automated monitoring network, costing $1.9 million, will become operational next summer in Laurel, Md. It will remotely perform functions of the nine monitoring stations set to be closed.
About $1 million will be used for remote monitoring equipment in FCC field offices.
Some concern has been expressed that continued field office cuts will hurt the FCC’s ability to resolve interference disputes.
