NTEU CHAPTER 280 - U.S.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
BEN FRANKLIN STATION, BOX 7672, WASHINGTON D.C. 20044 - PHONE 202-566-2788
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Hirzy.John@epa.gov
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PROTECTING FEDERAL SECTOR SCIENTISTS
Presented at the Center
for Science in the Public Interest
Conference on
Rejuvenating Public Sector Science
July 11, 2008
J. William Hirzy, Ph.D.[1] ,
Why protecting scientists in the federal government is important and some steps toward that end will be the focus of my remarks. I will also touch on empowering federal scientists, which was originally included in this Panel’s charge.
Humankind stands at a crossroads the likes of which we have not encountered in living memory. We are confronting no less than the prospect of a collapse of civilization within the lifetime of some of us. We can have faith that a collapse will not happen and pray to various deities about it but, in the words of the apocryphal wise old hill country farmer a better course is to, “Pray for a good harvest…………… but keep on hoeing.”
For us that means using the one priceless and irreplaceable renewable resource that evolution has given us – namely our collective intellect - and using it as though our lives depended upon it, because as far as our lives in the future might be lived in a generally humane, non-brutish fashion, they do. This means using science for all its worth, and not just as an amusing adjunct to faith and politics as usual.
Science in the federal sector is uniquely positioned. It has, or should have, tremendous policy leverage, altruism and openness, characteristics that give hope for its successful use in dealing with the problems facing us: global warming; population growth; habitat destruction; resource depletion and environmental pollution, just to name the primary ones.
How can empowering and protecting science and scientists in federal agencies help not just America but the world survive these challenges? How can government institutions employ science in a new and better way that will allow our collective intellect to bring us through to a future worth living instead of a new Dark Age?
This aphorism of Thomas Jefferson is germane:
Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
The global warming crisis is an example of how and why empowering and protecting federal scientists must be done.
I recently asked a Presidential appointee in the Department of Energy what it would take to get a Manhattan Project-scale operation underway to use existing technology to bring solar and wind systems on line to supply all our electrical energy needs. His answer was, “We only lack the political will to do it.” (see attachment)
Federal sector science can and must be an element of building the political will necessary to solve this and the other problems that threaten to overwhelm us.
Federal sector scientists must be encouraged – not just permitted – to communicate freely with all elements of the body politic about their science. For example, interposing agency press officers or other such functionaries between working scientists and the media should end. Gag orders have to end. This applies not only to climate change issues, but to all scientific issues of concern to the federal government.
Granted, that policy calls are the province of the elected officials of government, or those appointed by the elected officials. That is really the Constitutional process which all Civil Service members are sworn to support and defend. With that in mind, scientists turned loose to communicate freely their scientific findings would have to take care about treading on policy ground, but the value of getting the latest and best and most altruistic scientific information and analyses residing in government into the mainstream and making that information available to everyone cannot be over estimated.
What about scientific controversies in a broad sense - issues in which federal sector scientists draw one conclusion, while private sector scientists draw a different one? In a recent article (1) on the ethics of EPA’s removing Debra Rice from a scientific review panel on polybrominated diphenyl ethers, Herbert Needleman commented on the inherent disconnect between the interests of science and those of commerce. He said, “There is an unavoidable tension between the interests of commercial entities fueled by corporate profit reports and those of true scientists whose motivation is curiosity, peer recognition and societal benefit.”
For far too long in the federal sector, science and the policies flowing from it, have been held hostage to the ethos of commerce – to borrow another phrase from Herbert Needleman. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been the chief instrument – though not the only one - by which that ethos has dominated science in the federal sector and limited its effect on public policy. (I learned that ethos well in my nineteen years working for Monsanto.)
The Union of Concerned Scientists conducted a survey of EPA scientists last year (2), the results of which included fifty seven pages of essays from responders pointing out problems and fixes to them regarding use of science at EPA. Over and over again in those essays one finds reference to OMB and other forms of political interference with the ability of science to affect the societal benefit to which Herbert Needleman refers.
One way for the next President to protect the public interest and federal scientists is to get OMB out of the science policy business. The discontent among EPA scientists –and one may assume among scientists in similar federal agencies - is one obvious cause for whistleblowing, and eliminating that source of discontent would be a step toward reducing the need for that risky activity by scientists.
Here are some other steps that can be taken to protect federal scientists and the public interest.
First, if the current Congress and President do not do so, the new Congress must pass and the new President must sign whatever conference committee version of the enhanced whistleblower protection Bill exists next year. That measure now exists as HR 985 and S 274. These measures make important improvements in current protection for scientists and other federal employees including right to a jury trial, specific protection for scientific whistle blowing and requiring substantial penalties for officials who violate scientific whistle blowers’ rights.
One of the managers culpable in the firing of EPA Toxicologist William Marcus received from EPA the “disciplinary action” of transfer from a Division Directorship in the Office of Water to a Division Directorship in the Office of Pesticide Programs. Dr. Marcus was fortunate in having an Administrative Law Judge willing to judge fairly the evidence in his case, as well as in having superb counsel working in his behalf.
Had the managers who perpetrated Dr. Marcus’s illegal firing known that they could face severe personal consequences instead of merely transfer from one position of authority to an equivalent one in another Office, it is possible if not likely that they would not have done what they did. Dr. Marcus and his supporters would not have suffered the indignity and damage of being two years out of work. Further, the public could have more easily accessed Dr. Marcus’s expert opinion about the carcinogenicity of fluoride and taken earlier action based on it, with all the attendant benefits to them.
Second, the new Congress should establish by statute a permanent partnership[2] arrangement between Executive Branch agencies’ management and their labor unions.
That legislation should also amend section 7106(b) of the Civil Service Reform Act to make the discretionary subjects of bargaining between labor and management mandatory subjects of bargaining. The latter is important because one of those subjects is “means, methods and technology of doing work,” and under such heading would come establishment of codes of professional ethics that would be enforceable through the negotiated grievance process. If partnership is encouraged between scientific workers’ representatives and agency management, details can most easily be worked out for protecting management rights while making scientific information readily available and useful for public education and development of political will to progress along the lines of Jefferson’s aphorism.
Third, in federal science establishments where labor unions exist, the new Administration should consult with union leadership to determine which middle managers to take note of with respect to oppression of scientific workers. In this same connection, all managers should have as part of their performance agreements, a Critical Job Element, language for which would be developed in consultation with union leadership, which deals with encouragement of free and open communication of scientific work and analyses with the peer community, Congress and the public.
If managers have a Critical Job Element requiring them affirmatively to promote widest communication of their employees’ work products, and they fail to do so, they can be removed from positions of authority and replacements appointed who will do so. Managers will in this way see the self-interest in publicizing the scientific work that they supervise.
Fourth, the conflicts between scientists and managers that I have seen have often arisen because the institutionally binding decisions/sign-offs on projects within a work unit are virtually never made by staff scientists but by their supervising managers. When those decisions/sign-offs have a major scientific component and the manager and the scientist(s) disagree, especially over the scientific basis for the binding decision, sparks will fly.
There are at least two ways of addressing this source of conflict. One way is to make sure that those who manage scientists are themselves scientists who are at least conversant with the material with which the work unit deals. This avoids having people in decision making/document signing authority who don’t understand the complexities involved in a recommendation from staff scientists on how an issue should be resolved. (We had a case of a chemical engineer being told by her supervisor, “If I say 2 + 2 = 7, its your job to support me in that.”)
More often than the public would like to realize, people who are not scientists supervise the work of scientists. This situation is another source of discontent among EPA scientists revealed in the UCS survey. When a supervisor does not understand the implications of a subordinate scientist’s work, or has distain for it, and the scientist reaches the boiling point where he or she knows the supervisor is endangering the public interest, whistleblowing or utter frustration results.
Another way to deal with this problem is to change how EPA (and other agencies in our situation) operates so that decisions binding a work unit to a position and that have a strictly scientific rationale will be made by senior level scientific staff in that work unit. Managers in such a changed organization would deal with administrative matters, such as assigning work, signing time cards, managing resources, etc.
Fifth, legislation should be enacted requiring all Inspector Generals’ inquiries, whether formal “investigations” or informal “audits” to be conducted with all witnesses placed under oath during interviews. Our union had filed a grievance that led to our alleging illegal activities between EPA officials and industry that resulted in an EPA Inspector General “audit.” The report of the audit said that witnesses would not substantiate our allegations. When we later talked to those witnesses, who were not interviewed under oath, they said, in effect, “What did you expect us to say to the I.G.? We have mortgages to pay and kids at college and we need these jobs.” So much for rooting out corruption through informal I.G. action at EPA.
One last point. Protecting federal sector scientists is not just a job for “others” to do. Federal sector scientists have a role to play in their own defense and the societal benefits that follow. Not to overstate the matter, scientists tend to be individualists, and not given to thinking about the power to be had in collective action in their own behalf in matters of scientific integrity. We organized a labor union among the scientific and other professional employees at EPA principally to be the Green Heart of the Agency headquarters during the Reagan Administration, and we still claim that role. Every employee who comes to EPA brings a naive – in the best connotation of that word – enthusiasm for practicing his or her profession toward fulfilling the Agency’s mission and working in the public interest. But management pressures to go along to get along, and thus advance a career, and not worry so much about the public interest, soon become evident and hard to resist. Examples abound, unfortunately.
Among its other important and more traditional roles, it is the role of organized labor in the federal sector to counter those kinds of pressures. Federal sector scientists have to overcome their shyness about collectivism. Recent examples of successful collective action by EPA’s organized labor community also abound, and more are in the offing.
Finally, my own union, the National Treasury Employees Union, which does such a terrific job fighting the traditional fights for federal workers and in giving its subordinate Chapters latitude to do so, needs to re-think its reluctance at the national level to engage in actions that support NTEU-represented scientists when they challenge agency management on matters of scientific integrity.
Coming back to Jefferson and his aphorisms’ relevance for 2008, we face unprecedented environmental challenges the consequences of which and the means of overcoming which are not easily grasped by many members of the public. If those challenges are to be successfully met enough of the body politic must understand the consequences we face and then express the political will to get the job done. The knowledge, skills and abilities of federal sector scientists are a resource that must be used to the maximum in this effort and not wasted in dark and dusty corners of a repressive bureaucracy.
1. Needleman HL (2008) The Case of Deborah Rice: Who Is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting? PLoS Biol 6(5): e129 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060129
2. Interference at the EPA: Science and Politics at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Scientific Integrity Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. April 2008. Full text available on the UCS website www.ucsusa.org/publications
[1] Executive Vice-President, National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 280, which represents professional employees at U.S. EPA Headquarters; and (for identification only), Senior Scientist, Risk Assessment Division, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, U.S. EPA.
[2] First established by President Clinton in 1993 by Executive Order 12871 and later dissolved by President Bush during the first month of his tenure.