| Comment Number: | OL-10504214 |
| Received: | 3/8/2005 5:24:44 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:
I currently work for DHS at the Nebraska Service Center. I can't fathom how a fair pay for performance can EVER be implemented. I have also worked for DOD, DOJ, and USDA. One thing that is definitely present at all of them is favoritism and nepotism. It is especially prevelent at the Nebr. Service Center. Most if not all product line managers have their favorites and cater to them. They also have the employees they don't like and try to find anything they can to discredit them while over-looking errors and other problems that arise from their favorites. Over and over the same people,favorites, get the awards and opportunities to establish themselves, while other less liked employees get over-looked and/or igored. I have experienced the supervisor harrasement first hand as many other employees have. But you can't fight it because some/all the higher ups don't want law suites so they convince you that your wrong or need to just shut-up and get along! There is no way that a pay for performance will ever be fair because of personality clashes. So many of the supervisors (which some were put in those positions because no one else wants them) but not all, are just arrogant, egotistical, and power hungry. They will do what ever they can to put a disliked employee into a position of feeling belittled, stupid, and that they are walking on egg shells. This is not right when an employee is in fact doing their job as well as the majority. I have seen and experienced hostile working conditions. Sometimes this is the result of an employees actions, but more frequently because of a supervisors need to control, micro-manage, and babysit professional adults. Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease but more often than not, the squeaky wheel gets the shaft. How can an employee who does their job as good as another employee, compete when the only difference is a personality conflict? As I stated earlier, no matter what guidelines you give to a supervisor, they still have the power to ignore errors by their favorites and search beyond reason for errors against the disliked. At the Center, you can't hardly find 2 supervisors within the same product line to agree on what is acceptable and not acceptable (i.e. Denial/RFE writing, etc.) Two employees working the exact same application/petition in the same product line can be held to different standards just because their supervisors have discretion to decide what to expect out of their employees. In other words, one employee has to work much harder than the other one in order to live up to the supervisors expectations. That means some employees are being treated differently than other employees doing the exact same job. Therefore, when it comes to pay for performance some employees have to work much harder than others. If the standard by your supervisor is higher than the standard of another, some employees will receive compensation and others won't, even though they have done the same job and even more. Why not first fix the internal problems of consistency throughout the Service for like/same jobs? Until everyone is on the same page, for the same job, pay for performance can not be fair to the majority of the employees. Jobs at the Service Center are redundent and boring. About he only saving grace is the fact that we do have FLEX scheduling. We have to meet quotas so it is rare than anyone can abuse the system. We have no public contact therefore, our flex schedules have no baring on whether we can do our jobs. But if flex is taken away, it will make a difference on retaining employees and the morale of the employees which is already extremely low for many reasons. The unfair hiring practices of term to perm is one, the inconsistency among managers with employees is another. Please take into consideration the extreme favoritism/nepotism that exists within the Fed. gov. agencies like the Nebr. Service Center. Thank you for considering my experiences.