| Comment Number: | EM-008400 |
| Received: | 3/8/2005 9:26:32 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:
March 8, 2005 DoD NSPS Comments , DoD NSPS Comments: I write to express my concerns about changes to work rules in the Department of Defense (DoD). The proposed regulations, known as the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), were printed in the Federal Register on February 14, 2005. This message will be sent to both DoD and my representatives in Congress. I am an attorney who has represented federal employees for almost 29 years. I have come to respect DoD workers as among the best and the brightest. They have, in effect, helped America win the Cold War. And, I have neither seen nor heard of one incident where collective bargaining orcivil service protections have adversely affected national security from Vietnam, the Gulf War, Kosvo, 9/11, or Iraq. The current law provides DoD full authority to overrride bargaining agreements and do any thing necessary to preserve the mission. This reservation of management's rights has always been sufficient. I am afraid I don't have the time to cite chapter, section, and verse in objecting and opposing these proposed reg.s. I find that requirement as a precondition to commenting to be ultra vires, unprecedented, and simply an obstacle thrown at employees and the public to chill and intimidate them from submitting comments. Let me start by saying that the Reg.s are totally uncalled for an overreach in every area. In the area of pay there are no details so they are not even regs. You reserve the details for "implementing directives" i assume in order to avoid the 30-30-30 comment, confer, and Congressional notice period when you actually add the devilish details. You do authorize pay banding and pay for performance but I believe your concepts are flawed. Established as a budget neutral system, if one employee "wins" then another employee will have to lose money to maintain budget neutrality. This is not an honest system. Moreove, in a crucial agency like DoD you can not encourage hoarding information so that an employee withholds key information from their coworker so he or she fails while the information holder then comes froward and gets rewarded for saving the day. This is pay cannabalism and kills team work. Organizational, not individual pay rewards for performance should be the key component of a nwe system and this can be done now under existing law. Employees, like they can do under current law, must be able to grieve their performance valuations and their movement through bands if the system is to have any credibility. Limiting employees to an "administrative reconsideration request" is an outrage and will kill morale and any belief that the system is fair. On employee appeals there has been no demonstration of need for hancuffing the MSPB in hearing cases, deciding cases, or correcting inequities in penalties.DoD currently wins close to 90% of the cases before the MSPB. Tilting the balance further to prevent mitigation of an unreasonable penalty unless it is WHOLLY UNJUSTIFIED , as opposed to clearly unreasonable under current law is a serious breach of due process. It is a standard that is unmeetable and unfair. Hypothetically if a 30 year employee comes in 10 minutes late one day, these Regs will sustain removal because the "action" against the employee is not WHOLLY unjustified; the penalty is simply entirely unreasonable. Stripping DoD employees of crucial rights, protections, and checks and balances results in a second class status and will drive away the best and brightest to retirement or other agencies. This stripping of rights transitions well to the labor relations section which is "deform" not reform. The regs reduce an exclusive representative's right to bargain procedures, implementation, and adverse impact over matters which have nothing to do with national security, such as: the fair rotation of overtime for qualified employees (under current law you have the exclusive right to set qualifications so there is no danger of a bargaining procedure putting unqualified employees on assignments). the equitable rotation of overtime among qualified employees, healthe and safety issues surrounding "operational decisions" and hardships that arise from assignments. For example, the Regs give DoD the right to deploy a single head of house hold for an undetermined period of time. Today unions can seek qualified volunteers willing to be deployed in lieu of the hardship assignee. The Regs preclude any future union involvement in these cases. This is an outrage. Before unions could bargain over the above-referenced issues labor and management were bogged down in thousands of grievances over shifts, overtime, promotions, hardship cases, etc. These all disappeared once unions were able to bargain transparent, orderly, fair procedures that employees could understand even if they didn't like a particular assignment. These changes will take us back to a litigation focus instead of a solution focus. They are ill-advised nad wrongheaded. You are stripping the union's right to effectively serve as a check and balance over arbitrary or even dangerous management decisions. I am angry that these proposals seem to treat the employees who help defend our country as the enemy. Most DoD employees work hard and are committed. I believe that mistreating the employees will hurt the agency?s mission. I am very upset by NSPS. This system will change the way workers are paid, evaluated, promoted, fired, scheduled, and treated. These rules would create a system in which federal managers are influenced by favoritism rather than serving the civil concerns of the American people. Annual Pay Raises Under the General Schedule and FWS, employee pay was clear. It was funded by Congress and could not be taken away. However, NSPS will take away this certainty. Salaries and bonuses are funded by DoD. In the past ? as recently as just last year ? DoD did not fund its awards program. Given the agency?s miserable record on this issue, how can employees feel confident that our salaries and bonuses will be funded in the future? ?Friend of the Supervisor? Pay System With the new patronage pay system, which DoD calls ?pay for performance,? the amount of a worker's salary will depend almost completely on the personal judgment of his or her manager. This system will force workers to compete with one another for pay raises, which will destroy teamwork, increase conflict among employees, and reward short-term outcomes. There is no guarantee that even the best workers will receive a pay raise or that the pay offered will be fair or competitive. This system will create a situation in which workers are in conflict with one another and afraid to speak out about harassment, violations of the law, and workplace safety problems. Furthermore, there will be no impartial appeal system to assure that everyone is treated fairly. Schedules and Overtime NSPS will allow managers to schedule employees to work without sufficient advance notice of schedule changes. This will make it extremely difficult for working parents to care for their children and family. It will also mean that abusive managers could harass employees with bad schedules or short notice. Overtime rotations can be canceled, which means that employees may not be able to plan adequately for childcare and other important responsibilities. Civilian Deployment Federal employees could be assigned anywhere in the world, even into a war zone, with little or no notice. Public employees are proud to serve our country, but they are also responsible for caring for their families and personal obligations. America is at war. We are fighting for democracy abroad. But these regulations are an attack on workers? basic rights. Furthermore, NSPS will divert the attention of defense workers from the soldiers? welfare to protecting themselves from abuse on the job. I urge you to force DoD to rethink this proposal. We need work rules that preserve fairness, serve the American people, and respect the rights of Defense Department workers. Sincerely,