| Comment Number: | OL-10510746 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 11:43:57 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:
Re: Section 9901.201 and disparate impact upon military reservists. A general tone of this proposed regulation is that civil service employment in the Department of Defense should be made more like employment in the private sector. This is shown in the references to classification and to setting locality pay. However, this proposed change has the potential for a significant disparate impact upon military reservists. Reservists, who must spend more time away from work than other workers in order to fulfill their military duties, have in the past appreciated the fixed GS system for the stability and protection it affords them. Performance of reservists, who will spend at least three weeks a year out of the office more than other workers, will probably suffer in comparison with those workers who do not serve in the Reserves. It is particularly important, at this time when Reservists are such a large part of deployed military forces, that the Department of Defense serves as a model employer of reservists. At the very least, the regulations should include tracking of the performance evaluations of military reservists by type (TPU, IMA, IRR) and side by side comparisons with simulary situated non-reservist employees to determine if there is a disparate impact under these new regulations. Also, these regulations should explictly state for all supervisors that performance of military duty by reservists is in the national interest, and that any supervisor whose actions lead to a disparate impact against reservists (by relatively negative performance appraisals, or by wrongfully conflating military duty with leave) should receive negative evaluations as a result. Finally, all pools should be required to consider reserve service in determining overall performance, and should be set targets for amounts of performance pay to be granted to reservists. Only affirmative measures such as this will ensure against a disparate impact in an environment in which the actions of individual organizations will be closely scrutinized, but overall contributions to national defense by reservists will be seen as "someone elses problem."