Chapter 8: Public Employees - Rights and Responsibilities

Chapter 8: Public Employees – Rights and Responsibilities

Although public personnel administration has much in common with its private sector counterpart, especially regarding management techniques associated with such functions as job evaluation, job pricing, and performance appraisal, there are also fundamental differences in practices between the two sectors. Public personnel practices are open to public scrutiny, and partisan issues and questions of political control are always on the agenda.

In the Bill of Rights there are some limitations including constraints on the government’s authority to restrict freedom of speech and association (First Amendment), limitations the government’s right to conduct searches and seizures (Fourth Amendment), and restrictions the government’s power to deny persons life, liberty, or property without due process of law (Fifth Amendment). Public employees retain important constitutional rights when they enter the public service, and as a result, the actions available to personnel managers in the public sector are limited in significant ways. In the mid-1950s the employer-employee relationship in the public sector was dominated by the employer who was free to impose many conditions on workers that they had to accept to keep their jobs. Courts had ruled that employees did not have any rights in the job that were based on the Constitution. Public employees had virtually no rights in termination proceedings.

Liberty interests are triggered when the termination of a public employee is accomplished in such a way that the employee’s reputation is damaged and his or her freedom to find future work is limited as a result. This issue can arise whenever the government employer reports negative or otherwise unflattering information regarding an employee’s conduct or behavior on the job as a reason for termination.

In the area of freedom of expression, the Court struggled to carefully balance the interests of public employees and their employers. What should be balanced in each case is the interest of public employees as citizens to comment on matters of public concern and that of the public employer in providing services to the public.

The right of public employees to associate or refrain from associating with specific organizations is also protected by the First Amendment. It is also well established that public employees may not be required to support or join a particular political party as a condition of employment or to receive beneficial consideration in various employment conditions.

Employees typically have due process rights in termination proceedings and are guaranteed freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Likewise, public workers can expect equal protection of the laws and any distinctions drawn between them along racial lines will, if challenged in court, be subjected to the most exacting judicial scrutiny. The employer can expect in return loyalty, good faith, and efficient and effective work from the public employee.

Because the Constitution restricts government action these rights do not normally accrue to employees in the private sector unless they are specifically included in contract provisions. In this sense, public employees occupy a somewhat special status among workers in the national labor force. In exchange, government may expect, and indeed may demand, a workforce that is competent, effective, and politically neutral.