Clinton Seeks Flexibility in Federal Personnel System : Labor: Administration’s proposal would give management more options in disciplining employees and transferring workers into new jobs.

The Clinton Administration wants to give government agencies the right to dock a worker’s pay for poor performance and extend the probationary period for new hires, according to a draft plan to increase flexibility in federal personnel management.

The proposals are part of a legislative package the Administration is developing and plans to send to Congress early next year.

It is designed to revamp the way the government hires, classifies jobs, structures pay and awards bonuses. The draft would also make it easier to transfer workers into new jobs, a goal that would help agencies faced with downsizing and budget constraints.

The government’s personnel system--covering more than 2 million workers worldwide--has been widely criticized as obsolete, inflexible and too complex.

The system also is increasingly perceived as rewarding longevity rather than performance, with a bias toward hiring people at low or modest pay, promoting them more or less automatically for years and rewarding them near retirement with higher pay and a pension regularly adjusted for inflation.

The draft plan attempts to address some of these issues. Almost all of the proposed changes reflect recommendations made by Vice President Al Gore last year in his National Performance Review report on “reinventing government.”

One of the most striking sections in the draft plan deals with what some personnel specialists call “deadwood.”

The draft plan would create a streamlined procedure to reduce the time involved in disciplining an employee. The draft would also let agencies reduce workers’ pay, giving agencies a disciplinary option other than a mere reprimand or the more severe and protracted step of reducing a person’s grade level.

But at least one section of the plan--dealing with labor-management relations--appears headed for controversy.

The labor-management section would expand the number of workplace issues subject to bargaining and require binding arbitration in areas where management currently exercises control when union negotiations reach an impasse.

Management groups have criticized the proposals, and Republicans, who take control of Congress next year, traditionally have been wary of such ideas.

During the last year, Administration officials and federal employee union leaders held extensive discussions on labor law issues.

President Clinton issued an executive order instructing agencies to put more workplace issues on the table in labor-management “partnership councils.”

The Republican victory in last month’s elections, however, appears to have disrupted the Administration’s legislative strategy.

“Since the election, all the parties have put at least this portion of the discussions on hold, pending discussions with the new Republican leaders,” said Elaine C. Kamarck, Gore’s senior policy adviser.

“That doesn’t mean there won’t be some scope of bargaining in our eventual proposal. . . .,” she said.