The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-04-11

AOulSlAIld puI LllIOuSA O ACooAuVhoAA to investigate the civil service sys- tenn, and became head of a f1ve-man senatorial committee to make the investigation.
 10000
 COMPLAINTS
 Working with only 8 $2,500 appro- priation and with no staff except 8 stenographer, the committee, to date. has been given an unsavory mass of testimony about favoritism in gov- ernment employment. Much more is to come.
 No fewer than 10000 government employees have sent Senator Ellender complaints about employment con- ditions, and all indications are that his committee has barely scratched the surface.
 The general tenor of these c0m-
 plaints is that petty bureaucrats in
 certain government departments and agencies rule their staffs with
 dictatorial power and that the
 merit system is repeatedly nullified
 by the office politics and favOrit-
 ism these front-desk czars prac-
 tice.
 complaint is common that young and pretty girls get promotion where older women cannot get it. In some cases, the complainants charge that to win promotion a young woman must be nice" to her boss. In others, it is charged, petty bosses make regular prac- tice of borrowing money from their subordinates and refuse to repay it.
 One sub-boss is alleged to have insisted on staffing his office solely with red heads. Another, according to a complaint in Ellender's hands, refused to keep on his staff any woman who did not have an ample bust measurement. MEN KICK.
 TOO
 Among male employees, charges of spite work, of grudges long remembered, and of gross favorit- ism are made. In certain offices, where the employees are skilled tech- nicians and not just clerks, it is charged that men have worked for 10 years or more without salary in- creases, although Congress has ap- propriated money for such increases in their divisions.
 The answer to that, according to the charges, is that lump sum is is voted for the staff as 8 group. The top man app0rtions a fat raise to himself and his favorites and leaves the men at the bottom holding the bag.
 All of the complaints-or prac- tically all-come from groups sup posedly protected by civil service.
 Ellender's committee has created @ minor sensation in government offices here. The senator hopes to get the committees life extended so that 1t may be continuing organ ization, on the theory that its mere existence as sort of court of ap- peals for government workers may mitigate many abuses.
 BOOST FOR
 EFFICIENCY?
 But he sees the ultimate effects of his committees work as being valuable not merely to workers who have been discriminated against, but to the caliber of government work itself.
 We get these complaints of people who have worked 20 years
 or more without promotion" he says. That may mean rank fa-
 vOrtism, of course. On the other
 hand, it may mean rank ineffi- ciency. There are plenty of clock
 watchers working for the govern ment As things stand now, there is no way of wedding them out. They're protected, and a depart ment head can't do much about them.
 What we need is a revision Of the law to make these instances of favoritism impossible-and, also, to make it possible to weed out the clock-watchers and the time servers. If we can't do that, let's go back to the old spoils system" Copyright, 1889, NEA Service, Incl