Forest Service’s law enforcers give management low marks

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is not known for workplace contentment, ranking fourth from the bottom among 19 federal agencies as best places to work in an annual report last year. Morale inside the USDA’s Forest Service branch is lower still. In the areas of leadership, pay, teamwork and other measures of satisfaction, it ranked 261st out of 301 small federal divisions in the same survey, by Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that focuses on improving public-sector recruitment. Now a survey released Monday of a subset of Forest Service workers — law-enforcement officers who patrol 155 national forests, including six in Washington — offers detailed reasons for their unhappiness. Rank-and-file members of the Forest Service’s Law Enforcement and Investigations arm show they’re distrustful of management, highly critical of their top leader and believe the agency is rife with favoritism and hampered by inadequate funding. The survey was conducted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a professional association based in Washington, D.C.  Matthew Valenta, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 5300, a union representing 650 law-enforcement and investigation employees around the country, said the survey results reflect the feelings of his members, including those in Washington and Oregon. “This is not a simple case of a few disgruntled employees,” said Valenta, who works at Colville National Forest in Eastern Washington. “The agency is clearly in denial and has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the reality of an entire workforce with a broken spirit.” Last year, field officers reacted with outrage when they learned Ferrell had upgraded the pay grades for seven top law-enforcement supervisors. The rank-and-file workers were then under a three-year wage freeze and chafing under budget cuts. Ruch, of PEER, also contends a “boys with toys” mentality within the agency has led to purchases of Taser shock guns, rugged Toughbook computers and other equipment without input from officers in the field...more