United States Civil Service Commission

The Civil Service Commission is a federal agency that was created by the passage of the 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which regulates the hiring of government employees.

After the bitter divisions created by Civil War Reconstruction and the assassination of James A. Garfield by Charles Julius Guiteau,^[1] a consensus emerged to do away with the spoils system and recruit a permanent professional class of government employees, bureaucrats, and managers who would not be subject to political cronyism and patronage. Democrat President Grover Cleveland and Republican Theodore Roosevelt are usually associated with originating and implementing the new system of hiring federal employees.

Unionization and collective bargaining rights[edit]

In 1962 President John Kennedy permitted the unionization, after the Italian Fascist model, of government employees with collective bargaining rights. Not even the New Deal-era Wagner Act had gone that far. Saul Montes-Bradley observed:

"The unionization of government employees created a new class of American citizen:
A mass of untouchables who ran the daily business of government and who, through the alliance of their unions with the Democratic Party, created a state within the state."

See also[edit]

• Civil service system
• Civil Service reform

References[edit]