Rampant prohibited personnel practices at GSA: preselected promotions of under-qualified people, favoritism and cronyism, flagrant violations of Merit System protections, often motivated by bias and illegal discrimination. Plenty of age discrimination at GSA, with systemic bias favoring younger personnel. GSA's HR fully supports its most harmful, biased managers, the ones who run roughshod over other employee's lives. There is a "mean girl" culture in several quadrants. GSA has a substantial number of semi-incompetent people in highly paid positions across the organization. In one sub-organization, top heavy with GS15s and GS14s, the number of 15s who have little to nothing of value to do or contribute is an astounding waste of taxpayer dollars. One GS15 I knew used to spend her entire work day writing sermons for her church and printing off the Sunday church handouts. Another had nothing to do for 4-5 years and was allowed to work from home. Another ran the alleged reasonable accommodations shop but does little to no work and yet his manager always gives the highest possible performance rating. A GS14 under the same manager arrives late every day, is missing for 2-3 hours mid day every day, and leaves early every day and while this conduct is widely known and openly commented upon, there are no repercussions whatsoever for cheating his employer out of a fair day's work. Another GS15 has built a cadre of loyalists under him who owe him their promotions, even though he is a toxic, sadistic, Machiavellian, retaliatory individual against whom many complaints of illegal discrimination have been filed.
GSA developed a Diversity and Inclusion plan in 2012 when the Obama Administration required it. But then it did nothing it said it would do in its plan. Employee Associations pushed for implementation, with no results. Now that Diversity and Inclusion are once again a priority, under the current administration, it's same old same old with GSA, excluding advisory employee associations from participating in planning and development of GSA's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility activities. At GSA, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
