Comment Number: 05-02582-EREG-133-d7391-c32219
Received: 3/8/2005 8:00:00 AM
Subject: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
Title: National Security Personnel System
CFR Citation: 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901
No Attachments

Comments:

Pay and Classification

Your concepts indicate that you desire radical change to pay and classification systems, and, as the law requires, create a pay-for-performance system to better link individual pay to performance, and provide an equitable method for appraising and compensating employees. No reliable information exists to show that this system will enhance the efficiency of DoD operations and promote national security and defense. As with the proposed system at the Department of Homeland Security, most of the key components of the system have yet to be determined. For example, your concepts do not identify such critical matters as the grouping of jobs into occupational clusters, which positions will be in each pay band, the minimum and maximum pay rates of each band, or the pay point values which govern performance-based pay progression within each band.

One thing, however, is clear. The design and administration of your concept would be complex and costly. A new bureaucracy would be created, and it would be dedicated to making the myriad, and yet-to-be identified, pay-related decisions that the new system would require. Our country would be better served if the massive amount of resources associated with implementing and administering your concepts were dedicated more directly to protecting national security and defense.

As we stated to you during our meetings last year, until these and other important details of the new system have been determined and piloted, the undefined changes cannot be evaluated in any meaningful way. We expect, that once you issue your proposed regulations in the Federal Register, employees and their unions will, like our counterparts at the DHS, be compelled to comment on what is, at best, a rough draft or skeletal plan. The unions will then be forced to exercise their statutory collaboration rights on vague outlines, with no fair opportunity to consult on the real features of the new classifications, pay and performance system. This would circumvent the congressional intent for union involvement in the development of any new systems, as expressed in Public Law 108-13.

Accordingly, we recommend that the pay, performance, and classification concepts be withdrawn in its entirety and published for comment and recommendations only when: 1) the Agencies are willing to disclose the entire system to DoD employees, affected unions, Congress, and the American public; and 2) the Agencies devise a more reasonable approach to testing any radical new designs before they are implement on any wide-spread basis. We simply cannot accept systems that establish so few rules and leave so much to the discretion of current and future officials. As the representatives of DoD employees, it is our responsibility to protect them from vague systems, built on discretionary authority that is subject to abuse.

Regardless of the ultimate configuration of the pay proposal, we believe that any proposed system must contain the transparency and objectivity of the General Schedule. Critical decisions on matters such as pay rates for each band, annual adjustments to these bands and locality pay supplements and adjustments must be made in public forums like the U.S. Congress or the Federal Salary Council, where employees and their representatives can witness the process and have the opportunity to influence its outcome. We are concerned that these decisions would now be made behind closed doors by a group of DoD managers (sometimes in coordination with OPM) and their consultants. Not only will employees be unable to participate in or influence the process, there is not even any guarantee that these decisions will be driven primarily by credible data, or that any data used in the decision-making process will be available for public review and accountability, as the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is today. A compensation board, like the Federal Salary Council, should be considered to address issues that