| Comment Number: | OL-10507369 |
| Received: | 3/14/2005 10:35:43 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:
SUBPART F - Workforce Shaping Pages 7588-7590 Sections 9901.601-611 Under this subpart of the proposed NSPS regulations, the DoD will have total flexibility to layoff employees in any organizational unit, line of business, product line, funding line, and several categories of jobs and pay structures. Through the use of surgical RIFs, transfers, furloughs, and other actions, management will have new powers to reassign or remove employees for almost any reason. What's most disturbing is if a manager chooses, he/she can layoff a worker for something as simple as a personality clash between the manager and said worker. Regardless of work history, under the proposed system the worker will have virtually no chance of getting a fair hearing when challenging the action of management. This could lead to highly skilled people being removed from service based on personality conflicts, resulting in a weakened DOD. Under the proposed NSPS, a RIF could be limited to a particular branch, with employees in the targeted branch selected for layoff, and no other branches affected. This could result in employees working on a particular project being laid off, and nobody else would be affected. This is obviously unfair for many reasons, including the fact that employees have very little control over the branch or project they work on, and could be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Management could shift certain employees to a particular branch or project, knowing that a RIF is coming. Employees would also be very reluctant to work for organizations and programs that have (or may potentially have) funding problems, which would make it difficult for managers in those organizations and programs to get enough employees to do the work. Employees with many years of service and highly satisfactory performance will be much more susceptible to a RIF, since the proposed regulations place more value on recent performance ratings than on long-term consistency of work. Under this new arrangement, a DoD civilian worker with three years on the job with the highest performance rating in the most recent rating period could be retained over a 30-year employee with the 2nd highest rating over his/her entire career. These revised rules could cause DoD to lose many of its most skilled and experienced employees, which will jeopardize national security. This new process is not even the performance-based system claimed by the DoD. Non-performance factors, such as organizational unit, product and funding lines, and other considerations will affect RIFs more directly than employee performance ratings, which contradicts the purpose and intent of NSPS, as claimed by the DoD. Clearly, these were not the personnel flexibilities that Congress envisioned under NSPS. The current RIF rules that apply to DoD employees should be retained until a truly fair and appropriate set of rules is proposed.