By CHARLES B. CLEVELAND
Chicago
City's new personnel system: A turnabout by the organization?
SUPPOSE the world did suddenly turn
topsy-turvy and the sun emerged tomorrow out of the western sky. To most of
us that would be pretty startling, but in
another world — the world of politics —
that would be pretty humdrum compared to the notion that Mayor Richard
J. Daley of Chicago has turned advocate
of civil service reform. Yet, on paper at least that's just
exactly what has happened. With
Mayor Daley leading the way, Chicago
has adopted a model personnel code,
and it is likely that other major governments indirectly under Daley's control
will follow suit. Instead of a civil service commission
which had been manipulated by politicians over the years, the city now has a
personnel director. Testing procedures
which always seemed to wind up heavily
weighted toward political favorites have
been abandoned. So too has a long
standing practice of hiring temporary
employees as a dodge around the merit
system. Finally, city employees can no
longer be solicited for political contributions. If that's the way it works out, that's
pretty close to having a leopard really
change his spots. After all, Daley has
run the city of Chicago as mayor for
more than 20 years and has been
chairman of the Cook County Democratic organization for even longer. To a
large extent, he has become one of the
most powerful men in the United States
because of that dual role, and the basis
of his strength has been control over
jobs. Here's why. Unlike downstate counties where
precinct committeemen are elected, they
are appointed in Cook County. They
become the army of workers who, on
election day, produce the votes that
support the Democratic party. Over the
years city jobs (and others under Daley's
control) have been one inducement for a man or woman to become a precinct
captain and, to a large extent, the better
job the worker did in carrying his
precinct for the Democrats, the better
job he got in government. Now suddenly it would appear that
the ties are broken; no longer does a
precinct captain have a guarantee of a
job and promotion, and a person
already in a city job won't have to work
his precinct to keep his job. As with the leopard and its spots, not
everybody is convinced. Some of the
independent members of the Chicago
City Council who had themselves
introduced similar legislation a few
years ago (it was rejected then), aren't
quite sure what to make of this switch.
They suspect Daley has pulled a fast one
and that there are enough loopholes to
keep the system going pretty much as it
has in the past. Part of the dilemma comes from the
fact that nationally the reformers
themselves made a substantial change of
policy. Originally (remember the Jacksonian era of spoils from your history
books?) there was no merit system. An
organization was formed called the
National Civil Service League which felt
there ought to be some legislation to
guarantee a public employee system
which was not dominated by patronage.
They drafted a model civil service law. It
has been revised seven times since it's
beginning; the last time in 1971. Professor Jean Coutourier of Northwestern University was national executive director of the league in 1971, and he explains why the key change was
made from a separate civil service
commission to the concept of a personnel director under the chief executive.
"That sounds heretical because the
league founded the commission form,"
Coutourier says, "but in 1970 we
decided it was an anachronism because
it did not permit the chief executive to hire and fire personnel on the basis of merit." But there was a deeper reason: discrimination. Aid. Dick Simpson, one
of the council independents and also a
professor of political science at the
University of Illinois Chicago Circle
Campus, points out that only 1.7 per
cent of the 45,000 city employees are
Latin and only 18 per cent are women.
"Not only that," he says, "but women
are blocked from a whole series of
positions; for example, there is not a
single woman building inspector." Discrimination, as a matter of fact,
may underly the whole changeover in
Chicago's personnel practices. Professor Coutourier says it was the factor
in his League's decision: "The main
reason the National Civil Service
League undertook to revise the model
code was that it found most civil service
commissions were racist, as well as
regressive and rigid." The problem of discrimination has
given Mayor Daley a multi-million
dollar headache. Federal Judge Prentice
Marshall found the city guilty of
discrimination in its police department
hiring and promotion and has held up
its operation for months, finally ordering special quotas of minorities be hired
until a balanced force is attained.
Among other problems, the court's
ruling has held up millions of dollars in
federal aid. These problems, coupled with a series
of other legal decisions undermining the
traditional patronage ties to the party,
may be the real reason for the apparent
turnabout by the Daley machine. But
even here there are still unanswered
questions of whether it is true reform,
albeit reluctant, or just a sleight-of-hand
change in the name of the system. And that's the way reform came to
Chicago. Or did it ? 30 / March 1976 / Illinois Issues