| Comment Number: | OL-10509610 |
| Received: | 3/15/2005 4:37:17 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:
'Status quo,' as you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in...' Attributed to former President Ronald Reagan Finally! There appears to be light at the end of the tunnel for DoD managers. Federal Labor Relations have not just drifted but have leapt so far out of the realm of reasonableness that most union officials don’t seem to remember that accomplishing the mission of government is the ONLY reason we all have jobs. We are not employed here in DoD so that a small percentage of employees can pay dues to enable a few union officials to spend their time complaining about everything under the sun—even when it does not apply to their constituency, as would appear to be the case with some of the unions being quoted by the media. What happened to the concept that employees work and management manages? How can DoD be expected to accomplish a critical mission yet manage by consensus with unions, even going as far as “co-management” in some units? The actions of the coalition of national unions prior to and since the publication of the proposed NSPS regulations have clearly illustrated the need for drastic reforms to the federal labor relations rules. Filing a lawsuit to prevent the implementation of a system authorized by Congress? What a waste of taxpayer money! Has anyone filed a fraud, waste and abuse charge on that one? Current federal labor relations regulations are extremely confining to managers and frequently impede the accomplishment of the mission. The FLRA has stretched the “de minimus” rule to the point that it really means “any” impact. As the result of years of excessive permissiveness, we spend an incredible amount of money every year on official time for union representatives without any appreciable benefit to the mission. In fact, an amazing number of union officials are “100% official timers” which means they may not have performed ANY of the duties they were hired to do for several years! The DoD installation where I work has approximately 1200 bargaining unit employees. Over the past 3 years, the union has averaged official time equal to 3 full time employees. One full time person, the local president, has not processed a grievance in years but, because the current union contract was negotiated during the Clinton Partnership Years, gets to sit in the union office 40 hours/week with full pay instead of doing his real job, leaving his organization one person short on their manning. The proposed changes will make it possible to realign the use of our human resources to more realistically correspond with our mission needs. When Air Force went to a pass/fail appraisal system, we heard from many employees that this was actually a disincentive for them to perform since an employee who does just enough to get by was now rated the same (pass) as an employee who consistently goes above and beyond. The pay-for-performance program will change that perception. Although the unions have been priming their constituency to fear the implementation, employees should welcome this new program as a chance to excel and be rewarded for doing so. It’s not as if DoD had no experience with this type of program—look at all the Demo Projects over the years that tested pay-for-performance. China Lake for one. Thank God—and Congress—for NSPS!