| Comment Number: | OL-10507514 |
| Received: | 3/14/2005 11:52:09 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:
Raymond Mueller 109 Sidney Street Warner Robins, GA 31093 COMMENTS ON PROPOSED NSPS REGULATIONS PUBLISHED IN FEDERAL REGISTER ON FEBRUARY 14, 2005. Dear Mr. Rumsfeld: I understand the need for some type of reform of the civil service system but I do not believe this is the answer. I am concerned for the safety and welfare of federal employees. With the guidelines that I see set forth in the registry I feel that with them supervisors will not properly adhere to the guidelines and any sort of fair play in the system will disappear. And when you are not fair to people and treat them unfairly some people will become hostile and make it unpleasant to work as a civil servant. It has been know in the past when some people get upset they may even become violent. This would may it harder to recruit personnel into this civil service system. I was led to believe that the reform of the civil service was to make it easier to hire and promote qualified personnel. These new guidelines will have the opposite effect. I would shy away from civil service if I had to deal with such circumstances. I write to express my concerns about changes to work rules in the Department of Defense (DoD). The proposed regulations, known as the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), were printed in the Federal Register on February 14, 2005. This message will be sent to both DoD and my representatives in Congress. I have worked for DoD for years. I am angry that these proposals seem to treat the employees who help defend our country as the enemy. Most DoD employees work hard and are committed. I believe that mistreating the employees will hurt the agency’s mission. I am very upset by NSPS. This system will change the way workers are paid, evaluated, promoted, fired, scheduled, and treated. These rules would create a system in which federal managers are influenced by favoritism rather than serving the civil concerns of the American people. Annual Pay Raises Under the General Schedule and FWS, employee pay was clear. It was funded by Congress and could not be taken away. However, NSPS will take away this certainty. Salaries and bonuses are funded by DoD. In the past – as recently as just last year – DoD did not fund its awards program. Given the agency’s miserable record on this issue, how can employees feel confident that our salaries and bonuses will be funded in the future? “Friend of the Supervisor” Pay System With the new patronage pay system, which DoD calls “pay for performance,” the amount of a worker's salary will depend almost completely on the personal judgment of his or her manager. This system will force workers to compete with one another for pay raises, which will destroy teamwork, increase conflict among employees, and reward short-term outcomes. There is no guarantee that even the best workers will receive a pay raise or that the pay offered will be fair or competitive. This system will create a situation in which workers are in conflict with one another and afraid to speak out about harassment, violations of the law, and workplace safety problems. Furthermore, there will be no impartial appeal system to assure that everyone is treated fairly. Schedules and Overtime NSPS will allow managers to schedule employees to work without sufficient advance notice of schedule changes. This will make it extremely difficult for working parents to care for their children and family. It will also mean that abusive managers could harass employees with bad schedules or short notice. Overtime rotations can be canceled, which means that employees may not be able to plan adequately for childcare and other important responsibilities. Civilian Deployment Federal employees could be assigned anywhere in the world, even into a war zone, with little or no notice. I am proud to serve my country but I am also responsible for caring for my family and my personal obligations at home. We signed up for a civilian job. We did not enlist in the military. Today’s volunteer system works well. America is at war. We are fighting for democracy abroad. But the regulations are an attack on workers’ basic rights. Furthermore, NSPS will divert the attention of defense workers from the soldiers’ welfare to protecting themselves from abuse on the job. I urge you to force DoD to rethink this proposal. We need work rules that preserve fairness, serve the American people, and respect the rights of Defense Department workers. As Mel Brooks once said, “its good to be the king.” It must be nice to create a personnel system designed solely and totally for the benefit of the employer. It must be nice to get to overrule every FLRA, MSPB and court decision which didn’t go your way. Decades of civil service laws enacted by Congress now disappear in “spirals” down the drain. You can pay employees what you want to pay them, without regard to the laws passed by Congress. You can promote them when you want to promote them, without regard to the laws passed by Congress. You can fire them when you want to fire them, without regard to the laws passed by Congress (and, judging by the proposed regulations, without regard to the United States Constitution either). We are a small law firm that has represented federal employees and federal union locals for over 20 years. We’d be the first to admit that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 needs to be updated and improved. But to trash the entire system in favor of a single-agency personnel system that can be changed whenever the agency head feels like it does not represent progress. The proposed NSPS is narrow-minded and petty. It will not have the effect of attracting and retaining a high quality workforce. You already have a high quality workforce. This new system will alienate them in droves. COMMENTS: Subpart D: Performance Management This subpart would eliminate 5 USC Chapter 43, with its requirements for valid performance standards and a good faith opportunity to improve before an employee is demoted or fired. Supervisors would be permitted to set performance expectations in such vague terminology as “teamwork” and “cooperation.” No more than one progress review per year would be required. And performance ratings would be used by supervisors to “adjust” employee pay (presumably up or down). To top it off, performance ratings would not be grievable but could be challenged through some other procedure yet to be designed. This represents a step backwards. In recent years, most federal agencies, including DOD came to realize that all the friction and misunderstandings caused by multiple-level performance ratings could be eliminated by a “pass/fail” system. This allows supervisors to separate the employees who should stay from those who should go, and use other tools such as performance awards and time off awards to recognize superior performance. Now its back to the personality pageant as employees grapple with supervisors over who has the best attitude or who is most appreciated in the workplace. And the stakes are even higher: basic pay and retention in a RIF are on the line. If you think this is going to contribute to a more productive workforce, well…wait and see. Subpart F: Reductions in Force It is difficult to understand what you are trying to accomplish with the proposed changes to the RIF regulations published by OPM at 5 CFR Part 351. The proposal is certainly not simpler or easier to administer. It does give considerably less of an advantage to veterans and disabled veterans in a RIF. It is also requires that performance ratings count for much more weight in retention standing than years of service. Subpart G: Adverse Actions The proposal would provide for “mandatory removal offenses” for which no reduction in the penalty would be allowed. No list is given. Instead, the proposal says that the Secretary can issue and change the list at will. In contrast to the current law, which requires 30 days notice before an employee can be subjected to an adverse action, the new regulation would allow employees only 15 days notice, with only 10 days to submit a reply to the proposal letter. Subpart H: Appeals This subpart would establish a labyrinthine process for appealing adverse actions. Adverse actions would continue to be appealed to MSPB administrative judges, but the judge’s decision could then be appealed to DOD, whose decision could then be appealed to MSPB headquarters, whose decision could then be appealed to the Federal Circuit. The employer therefore gets four guaranteed opportunities to have its decision upheld, as opposed to two guaranteed opportunities under current law. There is no indication as to who in DOD will review MSPB judges’ decisions and the standards in this subpart would seem to allow that person or persons to disagree with the judge for almost any reason. And, throughout this whole ordeal the employee remains out of work, since “interim relief” cannot be granted until the appeal reaches MSPB headquarters. Prompt adjudication of appeals is a worthy goal. However, there is a difference between promptness and excessive speed. Under the new regulations, MSPB judges would have only 90 days to issue a decision. Naturally, the regulations put no limit on how long the employer can take to investigate and gather evidence before proposing adverse action. Yet somehow the employee is expected to be able to complete his own investigation, complete discovery, identify and prepare all witnesses and complete his legal research in less than 90 days. As a practical matter, the employee will be allotted no more than a month for these tasks. The reason is that it usually takes 30 days for the agency to submit its appeal file to MSPB and no MSPB judge is going to allow a hearing to be held any later than one month before he has to issue a decision. This subpart would also allow MSPB judges to issue “summary judgment,” meaning a decision without a hearing. We’ve seen how this works at EEOC, with federal agencies bombarding mostly pro se complainants with legal documents they can’t even understand much less reply to. Allowing a decision without a hearing is, in our opinion, unconstitutional. The Constitution assures that any public employee who can be removed only for good cause has a right to a hearing. There is another constitutional problem in this subpart. It states that an adverse action may not be reversed based on the way the charge is labeled as long as the employee has been informed of the facts in sufficient detail to respond. The stated goal is to overrule the “Nazelrod” case. In that case, an agency charged an employee with theft. The employee admitted he took $10 from an envelope but said he put it back later. The court, unsurprisingly, said the employee was not guilty of theft if he did not intend to keep the $10. The notion that a public employer must prove what it alleges in the proposal letter is so fundamental that it is required by due process. If an employee has been charged with theft, falsification or insubordination and is not guilty of those charges, the action against him cannot be sustained. If the employer does not want to be required to prove those charges, it is free to select any other charges it likes. The proposed regulations would also sharply narrow the grounds on which MSPB could mitigate a penalty, thus rejecting the “Douglas factors” which have been universally applied at MSPB and by arbitrators for a generation. The only basis for mitigating a penalty would be if it is “so disproportionate to the basis for the action as to be wholly without justification.” The facts that the employee has 25 years of service, no prior discipline, an excellent performance record, the offense was inadvertent, the supervisor had personal animosity for him, everyone else who committed the same offense got less discipline—none of these things would justify mitigating the penalty. It is a mystery to us how it promotes the efficiency of the service for an agency to reserve the right to impose grossly unreasonable penalties on its employees. The proposed regulations also attempt to ensure that employees who are successful in appealing adverse actions do not recover attorney’s fees. The effort federal agencies devote to trying to make sure that attorney’s fees are not awarded never ceases to amaze us. Federal employees are often unable to find attorneys. Attorneys represent appellants in less than half of all MSPB appeals. Moreover, the MSPB sustains agency actions over 80 percent of the time. Certainly fee awards cannot be an economic burden on the agencies. The hostility to fee awards seems to result from a belief that they are intended as a punishment to the agency. The proposed regulations confirm this, by narrowing the basis for recovering attorney’s fees to those situations where the agency’s action was clearly without merit based on the facts known to management at the time the action was taken. The purpose of a fee award is not to punish the agency but to encourage qualified attorneys to represent federal employees on meritorious cases. If the personnel action is unjustified, the employee should not have to bear the cost of clearing his name and his record. What the employer knew or did not know at the time it took the action, or whether it was acting out of malice or bad faith should not be the key factors in whether the employee can be reimbursed for his attorney’s fees. What if the employee is simply innocent? The employer accused him of misconduct and thought its evidence and its witnesses would prove the accusation, but they didn’t. It is not in the interest of justice to make that employee foot the bill for the employer’s mistake. The proposed regulations would also lead to necessary, but protracted fact-finding by MSPB judges on what agency management did or did not know at the time it took the action. Another objection to narrowing the basis for recovering attorney’s fees is that it is not permitted by the law. One of the “non-waivable” sections of the law is 5 USC 5596, the Backpay Act. This requires an award of attorney’s fees if the standards established under 5 USC 7701 are met. Those standards are not as narrow as the proposed regulation, and those standards include the standards developed by the MSPB over the years in the “Allen factors.” Labor-Management Relations—Subpart I This subpart is nothing but a wholesale assault on the concepts of collective bargaining and grievance/arbitration. The definition of conditions of employment is modified so as to exclude determinations regarding pay. This will deprive unions of the ability to bargain over any aspect of pay and will deprive employees of the ability to grieve such fundamental matters as the denial of overtime or premium pay. Also, as noted earlier, the proposed regulations would forbid employees from grieving their performance ratings. DOD says it will come up with some other process for this in the future. The definition of a grievance is modified so as to disallow any grievance alleging a violation of a law, unless that law was enacted for the purpose of regulating working conditions. The Privacy Act was not enacted primarily to regulate working conditions. The First Amendment was not enacted primarily to regulate working conditions. Yet, violations of those rights can have a profound affect on the working conditions of an employee. There is no reason why these violations should not be remediable in the grievance procedure. After narrowing the grievance procedure, the proposed regulations go on to take away the employee’s right to go outside the grievance procedure into court. They say that if an employee has the option to grieve any particular issue, he may not file a lawsuit on that issue. Congress obviously disagrees with the idea that federal employees should not have the same access to court as any other American citizens. That’s why it amended 5 USC 7121 in 1994 to strike down exactly the same rule DOD now wants to revive. What motivation other than sheer pettiness can account for this? The proposal would establish a new National Security Labor Relations Board (NSLRB) which would take over the functions now performed by FLRA. The only task left to FLRA would be holding representation elections. The NSLRB would decide all unfair labor practice issues and would rule on all appeals from arbitration decisions (except decisions involving adverse actions). The management rights portion of the proposed regulations is breathtaking in its repudiation of collective bargaining. Under the proposal, management would not only retain the exclusive rights it now enjoys to make decisions without bargaining but it would also not be required to negotiate over the “impact and implementation” of most of its decisions. Put more bluntly, the agency could simply implement a decision, with no advance notice to the union and no opportunity for negotiations of any kind. The proposed regulations contain a number of provisions about national-level bargaining. They state that there will no duty to bargain over national level issuances, such as DOD regulations or Air Force regulations. They state that DOD will decide, in its sole discretion, when to bargain over anything at a level higher than the level of exclusive recognition. Bargaining impasses will no longer be resolved by the Federal Service Impasses Panel. Instead, the NSLRB will resolve them. The proposed regulations take dead aim at two rights federal agencies have long resented- formal discussions and “Weingarten” meetings. A union would be entitled to attend a formal discussion only where a new personnel policy or working condition is being announced. The regulations would exclude formal meetings about EEO complaints from the coverage of formal discussions. As far as “Weingarten” meetings are concerned, the new regulations would overrule the Supreme Court’s decision that independent agencies acting on behalf of management, like the IG, must allow union representation. Perhaps the most disturbing part of DOD’s explanation of its regulations appears here. DOD says that it will hold union representatives to the same standards of behavior in these meetings as any other employees. Then DOD goes further and says that its new regulations reject the “flagrant misconduct” doctrine developed over the years by the FLRA (and the NLRA as well). The message is that union representatives will have no protection for any kind of vigorous expression of their viewpoints. Since you can be disciplined for calling your supervisor a jerk in the workplace, you can now be disciplined for calling the labor relations officer a jerk when he rejects a perfectly timely grievance as untimely.