| Comment Number: | OL-10510279 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 8:27:24 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:
I have worked for DoD for years. The NSPS 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. It sets up the seeds for a new “Spoils System” that deconstructs many of the safeguards put up to prevent such a system, and this is all supposedly in the name of National Security. It in fact allows meddling in the self interest of a few which could degrade National Security and embitter employees to the point of making them careless or unvigilant. SUBPART C - Pay and Pay Administration General Comments 1. Potential conflict of interest (ref: Section 9901.342(b)) - Management could compete against non- management employees for pay increases. Nothing in the regulations prohibits supervisors and other managers from being placed in the same pay pools as non-management employees. This means that supervisors could compete against the employees they rate (and provide pay increases and bonuses to each year) for the same pay pool funds. This is an obvious conflict of interest. Management could intentionally hold down the ratings and pay increases of employees to ensure that more funds are available for supervisors and managers in the pay pools. 2. Potential for abuse of pay pool funds ref: Section 9901.342(c) “Performance Shares” – No limits exist on the amount of pay increases, bonuses, and other awards that management can award themselves or others, leaving little or nothing for the remaining employees in the pay pools. 3. Satisfactory and higher performing employee’s pay could be frozen ref: Section 9901.342(d)(3). Nothing in these regulations prohibit management from freezing the pay of fully successful, highly satisfactory, excellent, or other successful employees. One way to freeze a fully successful employee’s pay is with “control points”, which can be implemented in each pay band to freeze salaries at a certain level. Page 7582, Section 9901.333 - Setting and adjusting local market supplements. This section states that DoD has the sole and exclusive discretion to set and adjust local market supplements, which if implemented, will replace the current locality pay system.Currently, locality pay is set and adjusted using salary data and input from OPM, OMB, the Labor Dept., and the Federal Salary Council, which includes employee representatives. Subpart B Classification - Section 9901.201 to 99901.231 NSPS will replace the current government job classifications by grouping them into a few occupational categories with pay being set in "bands" with the new categories. Individual employees will be unable to appeal these newly-classified positions or the broad range of duties under the revised categories to a neutral arbitrator. Subpart E Staffing and Employment - 9901.501 to 9901.516 The proposed regulations would replace longstanding provisions on hiring found in 5 U.S.C. Chapters 31 and 33 with unpublished procedures that will be prescribed at some future date through implementing issuances. This is especially troubling given the proposal to engage in non-citizen hiring to positions within NSPS. Subpart F Workforce Shaping - 9901.6012 to 9901.611 The Defense Department should not change the current layoff/RIF rules, which give balanced credit to performance and the employees' valuable years of committed service. Moreover, under he proposed regulations employment disputes over such matters would be unfairly limited to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Subpart G Adverse Actions - 9901.701 to 9901.810 Suspensions and terminations need review for reasonableness.