Calling the federal employee appeals process broken and ineffective, government executives are pushing for the creation of a single, independent and streamlined Federal Employee Appeals Court to resolve complaints in the federal workplace.

Officials at the Senior Executives Association, which has proposed the court, say that federal executives have become an easy target for long-running discrimination complaints, especially as the government moves to personnel evaluation systems in which managers hold their employees accountable for their performance. A single appeals court, which will be studied by a federal task force, would replace a handful of federal organizations, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that handle discrimination and unfair labor practice complaints.

THREE-YEAR PROCESS The current appeals process is lengthy and cumbersome. In the federal Equal Employment Opportunity process, for instance, it takes an of average 601 days for agencies to decide cases and another 463 days to receive a decision from an EEOC judge, SEA officials said. Most cases fail to result in a finding of discrimination.

In 2004, for example, of the 4,478 claims made by federal employees that were fully adjudicated by the EEOC, 96 percent found no discrimination, said Rep. Jon C. Porter (R-Nev.), chairman of the House Government Reform Sub- committee on Federal Workforce and Agency Organization, which has been looking into the issue.

William Bransford, general counsel for SEA, noted that creating a single appeals court for federal employees won’t be a simple matter.

“The challenge is to take the status quo and make it something new,” Bransford said. “You have to significantly modify four different appeals agencies that have a history of operating in this area.”

To streamline the process, those agencies will have to give up power and, in some cases, be dismantled. Bransford said the court could be created within one or two years without slowing cases already in the pipeline.

Another hurdle is convincing federal employee unions and rights groups to agree to the changes, Bransford said.

MOVING FASTER Bransford and SEA contend that consolidating the appeals process into a single forum would enable managers to confront workplace problems more readily, if for no other reason than that the process will move faster.

“Assume a manager wants to give a lowered performance appraisal with some negative comments because that manager in good faith believes the employee’s performance is substandard,” Bransford told the House subcommittee in November. “That manager risks the employee’s visit to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to complain about discrimination, which could result in a complaint against a manager that could continue on for years.”

Among the other problems with the current system raised before the subcommittee:

• Managers have become reticent to discipline employees because to do so can lead to retaliatory charges by problem employees of incompetence, racism and favoritism.
• Employees can appeal in several directions at once: to the Merit Systems Protection Board, to employee unions, in federal court and in front of the National Labor Relations Board or the Office of the Special Counsel.
• The appeals process is expensive and confusing, and it wastes time better spent working to meet the mission of one’s agency.
• Managers and supervisors tend to avoid written performance reviews and instead use an informal disciplinary system that works around problem employees or reassigns them to areas where they’ll do the least harm. Some managers even promote problem employees to solve ongoing disciplinary problems.