@glitterbag,
The civil service laws already specify all labor pay and management elements normally under union jurisdiction or bargaining authority, so the initial decision to allow Federal unions at all was of questionable legal merit. I have noted anecdotally indications that labor unions in some agencies have wormed their way into bonus payments for eligible government workers ( GS 16 or above), and tied them to their performance evaluations ( at least that was the testimony of a deputy IRS manager to the Congressional Committee investigating the IRS role in suppressing tax certifications for conservative political action groups when he was asked why the bonuses were paid).
Our Federal Bureaucracies appear increasingly to have become too self-absorbed and resistant to accountability, whether to the Public or the Congress which created them. The recent example of the Justice Dept. is but one of many. This is not an unusual problem among such agencies and
periodic shakeups and firm action are periodically required to restore them. During the Seven Year's war (which started in America with some help from George Washington) The British Admiralty executed a senior Admiral ( Byng) for getting a draw in a Naval engagement with the French, which they believed he should have won. As I recall the charge was that "he failed to do his utmost" and it cost him his life - he was executed by firing squad on the deck of his flagship. Voltaire later quipped that "The British occasionally execute one of their Admirals for the good of the others."
The example appears to have served them well 40 years latter in the Wars with Napoleon.
