Chapter 9

Key Terms:

• Affirmative Action: A policy or program intended to hire into public service or to promote to higher levels citizens from minority backgrounds who previously were excluded or underrepresented in the workforce, including women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans.
• Civil Service: Term for all nonmilitary employees of government; sometimes refers to a merit system as opposed to a patronage system.
• Collective Bargaining: Union bargaining on behalf of a group of employees as opposed to an individual worker representing him-or herself.
• Comparable worth: A principle of equal compensation-that is, the same rate of pay for work judged to be comparable in value to the employer or to society; used to redress past pat inequities, particularly with respect to women.
• Counterbureaucracies: Agencies, such as merit system protection broads at federal, state, or local levels, charged with protecting employee right and the efforts of public agencies to balance managerial flexibility with merit principles.
• Equity Pay Act of 1963: federal Law to have equal pay work, especially for women workers.
• General Schedule: The pay scale and job classification system for the federal government; has ratings 1 through 15.
• Human Resource Development: The process of (and the unit or agency responsible for) administering and making policy for people and positions with the public sector.
• Impasse Resolution: A occurring when either labor or management concludes that no further progress can be made toward a settlement during labor negotiations; typically leads to one or more impasse procedures-mediation, fact-finding, arbitration, or referendum. 
• Merit System: Approach to staffing based on formal qualifications for selection, promotion, and retention of employees rather than party affiliation.
• Office of Personnel Management: the federal agency responsible for managing the national’s government’s personnel.
• Patronage System: the system of selecting employees or awarding contracts on the basis of political party loyalty or affiliation.
• Performance Appraisal: formal method of evaluating an employee’s work performance; used for promotion and retention and to document disciplinary action.
• Personnel: The employees of an organization; also refers to the personnel function and the administrative unit responsible for it.
• Position classification: A system of job description used to organize jobs under a civil service merit system into classes or categories based on the duties and responsibility; the purpose is to delineate authority, establish chains of command, and denote pay scales.
• Public Personnel Administration: The totality of government organization, policies, procedures, and processes to match the specific needs of public agencies and the people who staff them.
• Recruitment: the process of advertising job opening for qualified candidates for an agency from which managers can choose.
• Reduction in Force (RIF): Laying off public personnel.
• Reverse Discrimination: Compensation for the past discrimination against racial, ethnic, or gender minorities that has the effect of discriminating against majority members of society (mostly white males); typically involves the use of fixed quotas to ensure minority hiring or promotion.
• Seniors Executive Office (SEO): Established in 1978 by the Civil Service Reform Act, The SES promotes professional growth, mobility, and versatility among upper-grade career officers and some political appointees.
• Spoils System: Practice of hiring for jobs or awarding contracts on the basis of party loyalty and connections and some political appointees.
• Sunshine Bargaining Laws: Laws that require open proceedings among state and local governments concerning negotiations with public employee union.
• Union: Group employees who establish formal organization to represent them when negotiating with management over wage and working conditions or in cases of disciplinary action.