| Comment Number: | OL-10504035 |
| Received: | 3/8/2005 11:01:17 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:
These are general comments about the whole process and idea. I'm sorry, when did the terrorists win? I had not realized that a system that worked for 50 years suddenly needs replacing by an arbitrary, dictatorial process. Are the Taliban running OPM? And is the Civil Service to blame for the intelligence failures of the Bush administration?(Shouldn't we get a medal if that was so? The CIA Director did.) A review of both the fact sheet and the actual regulations shows an amazing number of rights conceded to management. The regulations go into great detail of how much more managed employees will be, presumably by the same managers brought forth by the present system, but only vague promises of training as to how these managers will deal with this new authority. With little enough time to handle the present amount of training, who is going to do management's job while all this intense training occurs? Pay raises are now going to depend on how management sees you. Pucker up. To quote from the fact sheet: "Expands non-negotiable management rights"... "Nothing delays managements ability to act". Is this the federal government, that is supposed to set the standards in dealing fairly with employees, or a Wal Mart manual? The most loaded language comes with the words: "Flexibility on assignment". With those words come the destruction of families and communities of people who took a Civil Service job, endured the lower pay and lousy conditions so they could have some continuity in their lives, live in one place, take care of elderly parents, send their kids to the same school, become part of the community. While the Army moves towards making the soldiers life more stable, these regulations turn the civilain work force into some quasi-military organization that has to drop their lives on 72 hour notice and start over because "management" had an idea. If the few hundred Al-Queda terrosrist hiding in their caves in Pakistan knew how much damage the repurcussions of their actions had, they would cheer. Their cheers would of course be echoed by the corporations who sit outside the Pentagon with their "minority" affiliates, ready to pick up all the jobs that their bought Congressmen and Generals are ready to contract out because the DOD civilian work force is not "flexible enough". 20+ years in Civil Service, more awards that I can remember, more extra effort than could ever be catalogued, and this is the result. All the depradations of capitalism, none of the benefits. Reminds me of the jobs I had before I came to Civil Service, where vague promises of "profit sharing" never came true while managment redecorated their offices and upgraded the company cars every year. And so the war on terror becomes the war on the Federal work force as the "institutional memory" of the Federal Government is torn apart, and Halliburton is left to pick up the pieces. Well Done.