| Comment Number: | OL-10505585 |
| Received: | 3/10/2005 6:31:31 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 am unhappy about the assumptions behind the NSPS, and the practicality of pay for performance. NSPS is based on a wrong and rather insulting assumption that employee/worker rights, and collective bargaining capabilities, are impediments to national security. Isn't that exactly what the program is all about -- we workers, with all our rights and say-so, are in the way of national security? This is a horrible way of viewing the federal worker's role in doing the nation's work; I would agree with all those who say that you have not established a case for slanting the system in management's favor. NSPS, as a more authoritiarian system, is not a step into the new millenium, is the very kind of system that is most un-American, the kind our nation is supposed to overcome, not emulate. You want a more military control over a less civilian workforce to replace the shrinking professional military. Hire more soldiers! Oh, I forgot -- Don Rumsfeld says we have all the troops we need. Also, the whole idea of pay for performance is more practical on paper than in real life. I left the private sector to come to the federal sector partly because of the extent to which I have seen personality, subjectivity, and office politics determine advancement under this kind of system. I would sooner trust my pay to steady work and time in grade than to the games played out in private sector offices. There are some smooth players of the games of office politics out there. Are the people who frequently thrive in this kind of system really the ones you want to fast-track over everyone else? The civil service has been an honest workplace, a level playing field, and an institutional alternative to the private sector. Now, that's about to change and for the worse. I just don't see this part of NSPS working well at most offices except on paper. All the signals are that NSPS is on a fast track to implementation, no matter how many people have problems with it. Most people I have talked to think that Mr. Rumsfeld is working to ram it through because he just knows better than anyone else. So why ask our opinions? Why go through the motions and pretend you consulted with the unions? Is it to fool Congress? This process has been anything but honest and that accounts for a lot of the widespread skepticism you're encountering from the workplace.