Dramatic Reform in the Public Service: At-Will Employment and the Creation of a New Public Workforce

As is widely known, the state of Georgia transformed its civil service system in the mid-1990s. A new performance management and pay-for-performance plan was put into place, and authority for personnel policy was significantly decentralized, but perhaps most notably, all employees hired or promoted after July 1, 1996, were placed in the state's unclassified service where they were required to serve on an at-will basis. In stark contrast, state workers hired into their positions earlier continued to enjoy an array of job protections and appeals rights as members of the traditional classified service. This article seeks to understand the impact of such dramatic public service reform on the attitudes of employees. A survey of unclassified (at-will) and classified employees conducted four years after the reforms revealed generally negative views toward the array of changes in the state's personnel policies, but interestingly, unclassified employees were significantly less negative about the full range of reforms than their classified co-workers, even when differences in age, tenure, and other factors were held constant.