A survey of government employees at the FTC revealed that trust in senior staff under Chairwoman Lina Khan has fallen and is now underwater.
Just under half of the 720 Federal Trade Commission employees polled said they either agreed or strongly agreed that the agency’s “senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity,” according to the 2022 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which was released by the Office of Personnel Management.
That is 4 percentage points lower than it was in 2021 and an enormous plunge from 2020, when a whopping 87% of FTC employees under Chairman Joseph Simons said that senior staff were honest and had high standards of integrity.
The shift comes as the FTC, under Khan, a thought leader in what is known as the “hipster antitrust” movement, pursues an aggressive agenda to the cheers of liberals.
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Elizabeth Wilkins, Khan’s interim chief of staff and director of the office of policy planning, told Global Competition Review that leadership in the agency is working to improve trust.
“Our senior leadership takes the results of the survey seriously, and is dedicated to creating an agency environment that best facilitates the meaningful work staff do on behalf of the American people,” Wilkins said.
In addition to low marks on honesty and integrity, FTC employees also expressed lower levels of respect for the agency’s senior officials. Just 44% surveyed said they either agreed or strongly agreed that they have “a high level of respect” for the FTC’s senior leaders.
Christine Wilson, the sole Republican on the commission, bashed Khan for the low marks on Twitter.
“If you thought the 2021 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey was a fluke, or that working more with Chair Khan would improve scores for senior leadership’s honesty & integrity, you were wrong,” said Wilson.
If you thought the 2021 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey was a fluke, or that working more with Chair Khan would improve scores for senior leadership’s honesty & integrity, you were wrong. pic.twitter.com/7nGgaIzxMY
— Christine S. Wilson (@CSWilsonFTC) December 31, 2022
Still, despite the flagging survey numbers from FTC staff coinciding with the change in administration, several former FTC lawyers told Global Competition Review that trust has been dampened as the result of a communication breakdown between the front office and career staff and that some feel excluded from the decision-making process.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the FTC for comment.
News broke this week that the FTC, which has taken a much more aggressive stance toward big businesses under Khan, launched a preliminary investigation into whether soft drink giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo violated a law regulating pricing strategies.
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Also this month, the FTC proposed banning the use of noncompete clauses in labor contracts, a move that would affect a large segment of the workforce. The FTC contends that the practice is exploitative.
Last year, the FTC attempted to block Meta’s acquisition of a virtual reality developer, with Khan moving to block the merger despite staff recommending against it. The FTC also filed a lawsuit against Microsoft to block it from acquiring Activision Blizzard.
