| Comment Number: | EM-017425 |
| Received: | 3/15/2005 11:51:18 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:
Clinton, Ut 84015 March 15, 2005 DoD NSPS Comments , DoD NSPS Comments: I'm writing to voice my concerns over the new NSPS. It is the End of the Federal Civil Sevice? Many people are unaware that the federal civil sevice as it has exixted for more than a century is being dismantled by the Seceratary of Defence and Congress, First, it was only the Dept. Of Homeland Security. The administration claimed they needed the freedom to create a new personnel system for that new dept, free from the requirements of civil service law. Then, the DOD stepped forward to say they needed their own personnel system, free from the requirements of civil service law. Regulations detailing how these new personnel syetems would operate have just been published. Now, before finding out how any of this is going to work in practice, the adminstartion says it will ask Congress for authority to allow every federal agency to have it's owb practice, the administarion says it will ask Congress for the authorit to allow every federal agency to have it's own personnel system, free from the requirments os civil service law. Let's step back and find out where civil service law came from. Until the 1880's federal jobs were doled out in whatr was called " the spoil system " Each new president had the right to fire all the old employees and replace them with new employees based on who had supported him, who contributed to his campaign, or who were simply friends and needed a favor. Then President Garfield was unfortunatly assassinated, and the assassin was a disappointed office seeker-someone who thought he should have been given a federal job by the president. Congress reacted to this by passing the Pendlrton Act, which was deigned to create a career civil service that controlled the Whit House. Congress also provided that career federal employees could not be fired excpet for just and sufficieny cause. This all goes away under the new NSPS Over time, Congress revised and amended civil service law to the point where it reserved one of the titles in the U.S. Code for federal employees: title 5. Title 5 contains laws regulating all asspects of the federal employment. Some examples are Veterans preference, basic pay, hours of work, annual and sick leave, reductions in force, labor relations. employees diciplne appeals, workers compensation and retirement. The one constant over all these years was that Congress established the rules for federal civil service and those rules were the same for all federal agenicies. This all goes away with the new NSPS Now that Secretary of defense wants to rip all this oyt by the roots. The law that it persuaded Congress to pass on the DOD employees, includeding the employess at Hill Air Force Base, states that the Secretary of Defense may establish a new personnel system without regard to the civil service laws in title 5 of the U.S. Code. Only a few sections of that law were placed off-limits. DOD now has the power to disregard laws on veterans preference, basic pay and premium pay, hours of work, annual and sick leave, workers compensation and retirement. DOD is not exercising all of these powers, at least not yet. But the personnel system DOD proposed in the Federal Register on Feb 14-05 is an eye-opener. It does away with regular step increases in pay and cost of living increases. It says that DOD employees will now be paid not what Congress decides but what the Secretary of Defense decides. Employees will no longer be employed at a specific pay grades. Instead, they will be employed in " pay bands" covering a whole range of salaries. Pay band A for example, might run from $ 25,000 to $40,000 and every employee in pay band A could be paid a different salary depending on what this uears performance rating looked like. and the proposal all but eliminate any semblance of fairness for employees appeals and for collective batgaining by eliminating access to an independent third party for final and binding decisions. Instead, DOD will make decisions on appeals and decisions on collective bargaining contracts. It is unnerving to see these kinds of changes pushed through at wart speed without any thought of keeping the civil service system we have known for over 100 years. As sthe peoples' representataives, Congress has always insisted on being the ones who set employment policies in the federal government. Now they are giving it away to the heads of each of the federal agencies. What this means is that each new agency head can have his/her own new personnel system. The personnel system in DOD might be changed two or three times if one president appointed three secretaries of defense while he was in office. And what happens when a Democrat is elected president? Many of the employment policies which were so attractive to the Republican secretary of defense may be abhorrent to the Democratic secretary of defense. So they changed again. And then when a Republican gets back in the White House they are changed again. And so on. The end result if this spreads to the rest of the federal government is 20 or 30 different personnel systems, all with their own unique rules, all of which can be changed with the appointment of each new agency head. Things could get pretty ridiculous, wtih one agency competing with two or three other agencies for, say engineers or computer programers, each trying to offer different and better pay scales. And those engineers or computer programers will have a hard time deciding who to work for, who has the best pay policy? Who has the best leave policy? Who insists on a three-year probationary period, as opposed to a one year period? Who has decided to keep Veterans preference and who hasn't? The likely outcome is much less interchange of talent and ideas in the federal government. With each agency having its own personnel system, most employees are going to stay right where they are and not even think about transferring to a different agency. This is a mess! Nobody would argue that civil service law doesn't need a little "tweaking" to make it more som[le and more modern. But that's the job of our elected representatives in Congress. Let them set employment policy for federal employees. Our Congressional representatives are directly answerable to us, the taxpayres and the voters. The ehads of each federal agency are not elected and they come and go with each new president. Congress needs to wake up and take back what whey gave away, before the rest of it goes away for good. We have one government. We have one Congress. We need to keep one civil service system. Sincerely,