| Comment Number: | OL-10507874 |
| Received: | 3/14/2005 3:38:28 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:
While workers at the Rock Island arsenal toil to make the armor that is at last beginning to save soldiers' lives in Iraq, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has completed a massive rewrite of our decades-old system of employment protections for those very workers. Under the new system, for example, a "mandatory removal offense" is any behavior "the Secretary determines in his ... sole, exclusive and unreviewable discretion has a direct and substantial adverse impact on the department's national security mission." (§9901.103) This rewrite, called the "National Security Personnel System," has every promise of effectively ending independent thinking and whistle-blowing in our federal workforce, turning workers into submissive Rumsfeld slaves. The new personnel system sounds an awful lot like the 19th century "spoils system," in which corruption was rampant and employees had no rights. When government workers are unable, for fear of Rumsfeld's heavy hand, to alert us to abuses, watch out America! The unions who represent these workers are fighting to retain these protections. Roberta Till-Retz Iowa City ___________________________________________________________ I cannot believe that the government will do this to the very people here at home helping our soldiers and their families. You wonder why we don't have enough soldiers. My husband was in the military and because of the lack of funding for everything military (i.e. housing, daycare, armor, etc.) when his reenlistment was up in January I told him the military or me. My child developed asthma from your God-awful housing and got sick every week. He was a breathing machine, so were half the kids that lived in that housing. All you did was turn your head and pretend like there wasn’t a problem. You should adding money and security to military and DoD workers to keep them. I'm also a DoD worker but after this I don't know if I want to work for a government that wants everything and return for nothing given.