Go Enter ZIP code or state abbreviation. At some point in the next few months, the Bush administration or Congress will probably look at ways to overhaul the civil service. It's a good bet you'll hear a renewed cry to fire the poor performers and cut the deadwood.
Some politicians back reform efforts so long as they include quicker ways to fire people.
Others seek to trim the deadwood by linking employee pay to more rigorous job performance evaluations. But a new survey by the Merit Systems Protection Board suggests that the deadwood debate is not as simple as it might seem. Federal workers overwhelmingly believe that most of their fellow employees do their fair share of the work and that only 3.9 percent of co-workers are performing so poorly that they deserve to be fired, according to the survey's results. The finding reaffirms an Office of Personnel Management survey, issued in 1999, that estimated only 3.7 percent of the government's workers were poor performers. Still, these small percentages represent a large pool of workers.