A win for veterans

This WAPO story explains how the decision was made in the veterans favor, and the government is shown to have been ignoring veterans hiring preferences thru back door programs.

OPM said "it does not appear possible" to use the two programs "and also comply with the veterans' preference provisions" in civil service law.

As a general practice, veterans are supposed to have an edge for federal jobs if they meet the minimum qualifications for a position. But the two special hiring programs do not evaluate and rate applicants in ways that take the veterans preference into account, officials said.

The special programs were called into question in 2005 when two veterans, David Dean and Matthew S. Olson, filed suits contending they were wrongfully passed over for jobs and non-veterans were hired instead through the Outstanding Scholar program. The Merit Systems Protection Board sided with the veterans last year after OPM had asked the board to reconsider a previous ruling in their cases.

The hiring programs grew out of a civil lawsuit brought by a group of minority job applicants who contended that they failed a written civil service test because it was biased. In 1981, the government entered into a consent decree, known as Luevano, that established the two programs.

They were supposed to be temporary until OPM could devise new hiring methods for entry-level jobs in the professional and administrative occupations. But they became entrenched in the bureaucracy, in large part because they proved to be fast and easy ways to hire applicants.

The Outstanding Scholar program required applicants to have high baccalaureate grade-point averages or upper class rank; the Bilingual/Bicultural program required Spanish-language abilities or knowledge of Hispanic culture.

But a study conducted by the merit board in 2000 found agencies were primarily using the programs to speed up hiring rather than as a way to bring more African Americans and Hispanics into the government. White women benefited from the Outstanding Scholar program more than minorities, the study suggested.

I don't know the correct way for the federal government to hire personnel, but veterans are supposed to have job preference after leaving the nations military, many of the veterans applying for the federal jobs are also minorities, and or women, I am sure there has to be some common sense approach.

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