| Comment Number: | OL-10505610 |
| Received: | 3/10/2005 7:31:17 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:
Within grade step increases: No one I know trusts higher management at the HQDA and CFSC levels to play fair. No one believes that the Army will provide sufficient funding to ensure that good performers receive salaries commensurate with their performance. Elimination of within grade increases is simply an underhanded way to ensure that good performance, i.e., any performance at any level, is rewarded. Pay banding. Pay banding is highly likely to be unfair and inequitable. The Army has an annual history of mid-year screaming "Whoa!!! to all spending!" and then rushing in the last month of the fiscal year to spend allocated funding. This is no way to run a business. The powers that be have no concept of a reasonable budget process that allows supervisors and managers to execute their agency funds in a business like manner. That having been said, usually those in charge forbid using funds to reward good performers in the present system. The pay banding system will be an outrage. If we cannot reward good performers now in the current system, it will be more than too easy for the HQDA and PARO level staff to say, "Sorry. We dont have any money left this year to reward good performers." Level of trust for HQDA staff with regtard to the budget: Zero. The Fort Richardson Directorate of Resource Management takes away agencies' hiring lag money--money that could be used to reward good performers. This won't change in a pay banding system. Allowing the Command and the DRM to take hiring lag money that could be used for rewarding excellent Business based actions. Moving everyone possible in the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation arena to NAF is a barely disguised effort to east the way of getting rid of anyone at any time at the whim of anyone in the hierarchy who wants to terminate the employment of anyone they want to erase from federal employment. There will be no checks and balances. Staffing and hiring. Doing more with less will become even more of the way the Army does business. The briefing on the NSPS we just received said that staffing would get better and faster. I talked with a Civilian Personnel Operations Center supervisor today. Whenever they lose an employee, that employee will not be backfilled. This will become the norm. NSPS is not changing the monumental roadblocks that impede faster hiring; nothing appears to be changing at all. Not a single word of how faster hiring would be implemented was mentioned. It is all "pie in the sky bye and bye" at this point. Veteran's preference. The Delegated Examining Unit often fails to provide quality personnel for agencies. The reason is that any veteran can block anyone who has never worked in the federal government. Unsatisfactory veteran candidates block list after list after list. One cannot get a highly qualified civilian into federal service for that reason. Am I a veteran? Yes. Disabled veteran? Yes. Do i think the veterans preference system is fair and equitable? Absolutely not. Spouse preference. Spouses follow their Soldiers around the globe and make many sacrifices to support the Army. Spouses should get preverence equal to the veterans preference. Am I a military spouse? No. Did NSPS even think to address spouse preference? Apparently not. Locality pay AKA "local market supplement". Locality pay should be given at every installation if it is given at any installation. Include Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and other locations around the world. COLA is no substitute for locality pay, as locality pay is figured into the top three years for retirement; COLA is not. Supervisory responsibilities. This won't work unless it is strictly enforced from the highest levels down. Employee unions and bargaining units. From what I heard and observed at the Town Hall on NSPS briefing, there is ZERO support for NSPS from union personnel. What I heard would make me very nervous if I were a union member, which I am not. The