Comment Number: OL-10507668
Received: 3/14/2005 1:47:59 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 writing because of my concern about the so-called National Security Personnel System (NSPS) scheduled for implementation for more than 700,000 employees of the Department of Defense over the next year. I have been a proud federal employee for over 27 years. However I feel that I am being thrown aside and ignored. 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. NSPS has failed all DOD federal civil service employees. The system has been built with a belief that employees need to keep their mouths closed and to do what, when and where their boss tell them to do without question and to respect all decisions made by their management. I totally disagree with the proposed NSPS legislation because it is against the will of the federal employee that this program is being implemented. How long will it take for our elected officials to listen to the will of the people? The process typically reduces salaries and morale and the proposed system will be detrimental to employees that have a less than ideal relationship with their supervisors. The employee may in fact be a hard worker and do everything expected but the personal issue would weigh in heavily when determining raises, etc. The government system in place now has protected employees' rights from favoritism and the new system rescinds those rights. I am certain that one of the Pentagon's objectives in advancing NSPS is to construct a so-called "pay for performance" system. This is another case of deceptive labeling. Various government agencies have been testing performance pay systems for more than 20 years and invariably, the results have been that the majority of workers feel cheated when advancement, promotion and pay decisions are given over to the sole discretion of a supervisor. It's disappointing that solutions to problems are changed or scrapped when people forget why the safe guards were imposed in the first place. Has anyone investigated the state of affairs in Government employment 50 years ago? It would serve us well if someone did - and realized the fallacy of the changes being proposed. My prediction is that human nature will corrupt the new system in record time. The majority of workers feel cheated when advancement, promotion and pay decisions are given over to the sole discretion of a supervisor. At this time NSPS only applies to civil service working for the Department of Defense and is not applied to equally to other agencies that are still governed under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Implementation of this system will make experienced people want to leave the DOD and go to other Federal Government Agencies which don't have this system because it won't be fair treatment while comparing Federal Government Agencies. What is going to happen is that history has shown “once in place always in place” and once this system is in place for the DOD and it proves to be an unfair and unjust system that doesn’t work, this system will not be put in place for any more Federal Agencies, but at the same time the DOD will not revert to the old “tried and true” system. The main thing I see about the current system is that management doesn’t have what it takes to get rid of deadbeat employees and they would rather screw up and revise the entire system instead. If there are problems with the current Civil Service system - then address the problems. But, please don't scrap the system because of poor management, corruption and nepotism. Although Congress acceded to the broad requests lodged by the DOD, it attached certain strict conditions--including a specific requirements that DOD observe legal requirements of labor relations statutes and that they involve duly elected unions in the development of the new system. The Pentagon has done neither. Although DOD has convened a dozen or more meetings to "brief stakeholders" and to "solicit the views" of unions, there has been no information sharing from DOD and absolutely no response to repeated union requests for specific information as to exactly what problems management wishes to address with the adoption of NSPS. For these reasons, I strongly oppose the implementation of NSPS and I urge you to act to instruct the Secretary of Defense to halt any further development of NSPS unless and until the Pentagon is willing to substantively address the issues raised by the United DOD Workers Coalition.