Topeka ? Labor unions representing Kansas state employees said new policies that Gov. Sam Brownback announced last week would strip many workers of their civil service protection, cut benefits to state employees and make it easier for supervisors to hand-pick the employees they want to get rid of during a layoff.

“It is definitely a loss of job security, especially if they’re moving to make more jobs unclassified,” said Rebecca Proctor, interim director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, or KOSE, the state’s largest public employee union.

KOSE represents many of the classified employees in executive branch agencies such as the departments of transportation, corrections, children and family services, and aging and disability services.

Brownback’s Secretary of Administration Jim Clark announced the proposed changes Wednesday. Some would require new legislation, including a law that would make it easier for agencies to convert classified positions, which have civil service protection, into unclassified positions, which do not.

But Clark said the administration can enact other changes on its own through regulations, including limiting employees’ ability to appeal a performance review, and changing the method used to select employees who are subject to layoff.

He also said the state intends to reopen negotiations this year on all of its union contracts in order to make policies within those contracts more consistent.

Clark said the changes are intended to bring more flexibility to personnel management and to reflect prevailing practices in the private sector.

But Proctor said the theory behind civil service protection in the public sector is that those jobs are funded with taxpayer money, and therefore hiring, firing and promotions should be based solely on merit and not on someone’s personal or political connections to a supervisor.

Mike Scribner, head of the Teamsters Local Union 696, which represents juvenile correctional officers in Topeka and Larned, had only a short, terse response to Clark’s announcement.

“Top-down changes are never a good thing,” he said. “Employees should have had a voice.”

Proctor said the changes will make it harder for the state to attract and retain a quality workforce.

“They’re just making the state a worse place to work,” Proctor said. “The State is already not an employer of choice for most young people. Young people entering the workplace today are aware of the state’s budget situation, and tend to go somewhere they can get better working conditions and higher salaries.”

Proctor pointed to a recent analysis by the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System that showed the average active KPERS member working for the state is now almost 47 years old and has been working for the state for nearly 12.5 years.

The average state worker’s salary is $42,093 a year, slightly above the statewide average yearly earnings of $41,246.

Department of Administration spokesman John Milburn said the changes being sought should help the state reverse those trends.

“We would argue that these changes will provide more flexibility in the hiring practices so we can attract qualified people to positions,” Milburn said. “By being unclassified, agencies can tailor and adapt a position to the skills a person brings to that job. They can also adapt positions as things change in agencies over time.”

Meanwhile, Proctor said state employee unions are concerned about proposals in the Legislature that would restrict union bargaining power even further.

Senate Bill 179 was introduced recently by Sen. Jeff Melcher, R-Leawood. It would amend the Public Employee-Employer Relations Act by limiting union negotiations to the issues of wages and benefits. All other issues, such as grievance procedures, disciplinary procedures and other working conditions, would be left to the discretion of the agencies.

It would also require that local governments get voter approval before they could recognize any new collective bargaining units.

Melcher said Friday that the timing of his bill introduction was coincidental, and it was not a response to the administration’s proposed changes. But he said it does try to achieve similar goals.

“What I’m trying to accomplish with the bill is to be able to allow the governments to establish competitive wages and benefits for workers and be able to have the flexibility to move workers as they need to, to be able to make staffing adjustments, and be able to apply performance-based compensation systems,” Melcher said.