I’ve told this story before, but I worked in the Yates Building (4NWW) in the Washington Office at one time back in the day, and there was a bank of copy machines in the middle of the floor. The Recreation staff was also on the fourth floor and I remember chatting with a recreation special uses person whose opinion of the reduction of the R-9 regional office staff was quite low. Her story was that she had become the “phone pal” of all the forest folks in R-9.
Many thanks to Dave Stack of the National Museum of Forest Service History for the below document! I’d be really interested in retirees’ views of how this worked and whether we could learn any lessons from their efforts, including those to downsize the R9 Regional Office.
Just as with the Pilot program of the 80’s (I couldn’t find any documentation on this one, other than the Tom Peters documentary), I feel a positive creative energy in this write-up, as if employees’ ideas were to be explored and unnecessary irritants to employees possibly removed. There was a spirit of hope among employees that our talents could be used to deliver better and lower-cost service to the public.
Did that happen? What were the results?
Certainly reducing employee numbers was part of the National Performance Review effort. But that was combined with (potentially) unleashing those employees left to improve efficiency. I would argue that for the current Admin, it’s not too late to involve employees in improvement efforts. I would also argue that enough folks in the FS have gone, and it’s time to consolidate and streamline..and those efforts can only be done by knowledgeable and supportive folks in-house.
Anyway, there are some consistent themes between 1993 and today and some differences. I’m also curious whether anyone remembers what a “strategic management mode” entails.
Thanks for getting this document Sharon. I was in R9 when this was going on. It was a very uncertain time. Some quick thoughts:
We were threatened with RIFs. We were told by MANAGEMENT that budgets were being slashed and we had no choice by to buy into this. Incidently, the budgets were never slashed, but the reorganization continued anyway.
All of R9 (and probably the rest of the FS) did massive reorganization. Most adjoining Forests were joined together (the Chequamegon-Nicolet NF). Many District combined (the Glidden and Hayward District became the Great Divide) (we called it the Great Divided District). None of this reorganization ever saved any money, but centralized the GS 14s and up and they got raises (none of us did); and we all lost the local community support.
Employees were very unhappy and uncertain what was going on. Many had to pick up roots and move to the consolidated SO of District HQ.
This was, obviously, a top down directive. Was the Union involved–yes, but only to participate in the downsizing, not to be part of why we were doing this and whether any of this make any sense (it didn’t). This top-down fiasco was decided without any real Union input.
At this same time, too, Clinton Gore came up with the idea is stop timber sales, hiding behind the Below Cost Timber Sale fiasco and total BS economics.
I was the Union legislative chair and when the Gore announced his intention to stop timber sales, I lost about half my Union members.
A big difference between then and now was that the MANAGERS (yuk…) bought into this hook line and sinker. The MANAGERS didn’t care a hoot about us employee–they only sucked up to their upper management–sucking up to the WO–sucking up to Clinton Gore.
Another difference is that back then, the national unions were weak in opposing this Reinvention Government, and basically were bought off, by giving us a “say” and how we were being downsized by giving us a “seat” in Partnership Councils–what a joke. Now the Unions are fighting back. About time, but it came about 35 years too late. And obviously, this is completely partisan (Clinton Gore & Democrats–good; Trump & Republicans–bad). Typical Union partisanship.
I could go on and on
Thanks for sharing your experience, Art!
Art, I wasn’t in the FS during that time but sure got to deal with the aftereffects of such dysfunction. I was a DR on a Forest that went from 12 Ranger Districts to 5! Talk about resentment and bad blood; I can see why, but those decisions were made before I arrived – so to speak. We closed offices, work centers, went through the whole rigmarole of getting RF approval to proceed to the WO for name changes, etc. I left there in 2010, and all that work is still sitting on a shelf somewhere. The rangers got a bump to GS-13’s, in the late ‘90’s, I think, offices & work centers that were once were a part of the community were shuttered, employees “surplussed”, etc. We could no longer hire local; we had to be “woke” and waste time convincing folks to move to the sticks….
Piss-poor political nonsense that even today is having ramifications…..
Jim, it’s hard getting some people to move to the sticks.. it’s pretty hard to convince folks to move to DC as well, as least in my experience.
Yeah, about the same for encouraging either the sticks or DC, I’d always choose the sticks….🤣
Hi All, been out sailing for the last while and out of service.
I was thinking about the R9 piece you found.
This article sounds like something that would now be written by ChatGPT. There were (and I’m assuming still are) so many buzz words– and “managers” got promoted by being able to write endless drizzle with buzz words. They also got promoted by getting into some kind of trouble (alcoholism, sexual improprieties, etc) and by being a fast talker.
Remember that the Forest Service has always been at the bottom of Federal agencies in employee satisfaction (I forget that name of that poll…)
Another funny think I remember about the reorganization was when the Lakewood District combined with the Laona District, and we called it La La Land.