Morale is Low among Workers in National Parks, Survey Finds

by Michael Doyle
Fresno Bee - November 14, 2003

Backstage grumbling apparently roils Yosemite and other national parks.

In a new nationwide survey, National Park Service employees roundly complain about special-interest influence, political pressure and poor Washington leadership. Most tellingly, nearly seven out of 10 employees who were asked said the Park Service is now on the "wrong track," and nearly eight in 10 say morale has declined in recent years.

The e-mail survey presented Thursday collected 1,361 responses, with about one in four coming from the West Coast. Commissioned by environmentalists who are fighting the Bush administration, the survey's responses amounted to about 8% of the Park Service's permanent work force.

"We definitely are facing morale issues here," Yosemite spokeswoman Debra Schweizer said. "One of the big issues has been competitive outsourcing."

This is the term for the Bush administration's plans to convert some Park Service positions into private jobs. The survey found 66% of employees worried a "great deal" about the proposal, more than were worried about protecting visitor safety, air pollution or maintenance.

On Thursday, though, National Park Service Director Fran Mainella advised employees that entrance station fee collectors will no longer be considered for private-sector work.

That's welcome news for those holding the approximately 41 fee-collecting slots at Yosemite and 19 fee-collecting slots at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

"A lot of people had expressed concern about that," Schweizer said.

Schweizer, who has worked for the Park Service for five years, added that "for a lot of employees, the mission means so much to them" that changes in policy can appear threatening to the core idea of protecting natural resources. Intriguingly, the survey suggests dissatisfaction is greatest among the most senior workers: 76% of the workers with 20 or more years of experience said the agency was on the wrong track compared with 56% of employees with five years of experience or less.

Park Service spokesman David Barna acknowledged that morale concerns exist but disputed the environmentalists' claim that Bush administration policies are to blame.

A career federal employee, Barna noted that money and national focus have been drawn away by the war on terror, and that politicians' bureaucrat-bashing also can exact a toll.

"What you're seeing is a lot of pent-up frustration about being a career civil servant," Barna said.

Because the survey prepared for the Campaign to Protect America's Lands is apparently the first of its kind, the results can't be compared to employee attitudes in prior administrations.

Moreover, the absence of other surveys makes it impossible to say how the Park Service compares to other federal agencies and whether dissatisfaction is endemic to government work.

The survey itself inadvertently hints at how employee discontent may linger despite objective improvements. For instance, 46% of the employees said they thought the Park Service's maintenance backlog had worsened in recent years, and only 10% thought it had gotten better.

The General Accounting Office in a September report noted that "a number of important and substantial steps" have been taken to address the maintenance backlog.