Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2007)

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Chairman, I rise to engage the subcommittee chairwoman, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, in a colloquy to express my concerns regarding the Comptroller General's implementation of the Human Capital Reform Act of 2004 and the resulting unionization effort at the Government Accountability Office.

For the past 18 months, the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, which I chair, has been investigating certain personnel actions taken by the Comptroller General.

Our investigation culminated in a joint House and Senate hearing on May 22, where CRS's legal division and the General Counsel for the GAO's Personnel Appeals Board testified that, based on current statute, GAO did not have the authority to deny over 300 employees who met and, in some cases, exceeded expectations, their 2006 and 2007 annual across-the-board increase.

GAO says that it took this action based upon a compensation-based study conducted by Watson Wyatt. However, when the subcommittee's staff, working with experts in market-based pay, reviewed the documentation, they were unable to validate that the employees who did not receive their across-the-board increase were overpaid, as asserted by GAO.

In addition to meeting their performance expectations, these employees were among the most experienced, with over 25 years of service to GAO.

The workforce at GAO has been severely disrupted by these personnel actions. In reaction to them, a majority of GAO's 1,500 analysts filed a petition with the GAO's Personnel Appeals Board to be represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Unfortunately, GAO has responded by hiring the law firm Venable, LLC, to represent it before the PAB. It is uncommon for a Federal agency to use taxpayers' dollars to hire private sector counsel for such purposes. In addition, GAO is asserting that one-third of the petitioners are supervisors and, therefore, cannot unionize.

Furthermore, GAO has indicated that if its challenge is successful, and it can show that the alleged supervisors were involved in the solicitation of authorization cards for the remaining eligible employees, it will not commit to recognize and bargain with the employee group.

I yield to the chairwoman to ask what steps has the Appropriations Committee taken to address Member and employee concerns about the situation at the GAO.

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Thank you, Chairman Wasserman Schultz. My committee will continue to closely monitor this situation as well. I look forward to working with your subcommittee on this matter in the future.

Representatives Wynn, Van Hollen, and Majority Leader Hoyer regret that they could not be here to speak on this issue. However, I have statements from them, and will submit them for the Record, along with a letter dated June 21, 2007, from the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers to Comptroller General David Walker alleging unfair labor practices.

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