| Comment Number: | OL-10504204 |
| Received: | 3/8/2005 5:02:49 PM |
| 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:
Please do not implement the proposed UNFAIR NSPS system for the DOD. It has already been proven to be a failure at other agency's. The article below expresses my concerns: Pentagon Work Reforms Tuesday, March 1, 2005; Page A14 AS PROMISED, the Defense Department has followed the Department of Homeland Security in proposing new rules on promotion and pay for its 770,000 civilian employees. Like those proposed at DHS, the new Defense Department rules are intended to modernize a large and often unwieldy bureaucracy, and to better prepare it for the post-Sept. 11 world. As at DHS, the Pentagon's new system sounds terrific on paper. The proposed regulations advocate an "agile and responsive workforce," "fiscally sound" management, and a "credible and trusted" system that ensures accountability and fairness. The new arrangement, known as the National Security Personnel System, is above all intended to link pay more closely to employee performance. Subtly, it may even give performance priority over seniority in hiring and firing decisions. And -- just like the Department of Homeland Security's proposed changes -- the proposed Defense Department civil service reform raises a number of alarms. This is not because it is wrong in principle, but rather because it contains in practice a number of changes that could, if not monitored, lead to the greater politicization of what should be a neutral government department. An extremely complex system of distributing performance-based pay is proposed, with few details about how performance will actually be measured. It isn't immediately clear, for example, how performance measures in the new system will differ from those in the existing system. Without clarity -- and extensive training for managers -- it would take very little for politicization to creep in. Second, this proposed reform, even more than its predecessors, appears to curtail union rights in unnecessary ways. Although Pentagon officials deny it, some government employee unions say that they were not properly consulted on the new rules, as the law requires, and they have filed a lawsuit. Union officials also say the new rules seem designed to take away workers' rights, without any clear explanation of why this is necessary. At the moment, for example, they say managers are allowed but not required to bargain with unions over job placements and assignments; the new rules appear to forbid any bargaining. The same is true of decisions about overtime. Officials ought to explain what, if anything, these changes have to do with national security, as opposed to weakening the unions. More important, Congress ought to ask for explanations and explore in greater depth the whole issue of civil service reform. Because these personnel decisions involve so many people, and could have such national impact, lawmakers should consider stepping in to help define what performance criteria mean, to preserve a meaningful appeals process and to ensure that unions stay involved in government employee affairs, at least when there is no reason to bar them.