Comment Number: OL-10511676
Received: 3/16/2005 4:42:38 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've been listening to alot of folks comments in my office realm and around this base. The generalalisms are alarming. Some folks are fearful that all our wages will end up being a minimum wage. Some feel that this will get rid of the good old boy regime. Some feel that this will make it super easy for a supervisor to get rid of people because he/she lost money in the lottery/casino the night before and wanted to take it out on someone. Or any other weak nefarious unjust reason. This NSPS will make it so easier to "Get rid of dead driftwood" seems to be the summation of it. I have heard that one so many times over the weeks. I have known folks to retire within the last couple of years early, even though they wanted to keep working, but as soon as the email propoganda on this NSPS started hitting the computers, they started bailing out because they did not agree or want to be submitted to the mercy of the pay band concept, that is also a very good punishment tool? 10% downgrade in pay? How does one budget they said, with a flutuating unreliable pay scale such as that? You can't get debts or mortgages paid down at that rate. So they left with their retirement locked in with the scale pay they had, instead of a lesser one they might have ended up with, because they did not want to take a gamble with this new personnel system. The retirees said the personnel system we have now was complicated as it was with everything going automated. So it seems we lost some valuable skills when those retirees left. What would Franklin Delano Roosevelt say to this. Or Will Rogers, I wonder. Wasn't the Federal Government formed from the WPS and trying to get folks out of the bread line during the depression? "A chicken in every pot"? It seems like we're coming back around to that again. The depression. Some folks are tearing down a system that other folks tried to build up. Alot of lobbying for equality and job security and benefits, went into these federal jobs. How can this kite (NSPS) fly ? People come into these jobs for equality, human dignity, job security and benefits. That's the carrot and if you take that away what's the draw? Too much unpredictability. It is too shaky of an enterprise, this NSPS. What about the Security, of the country. If you have high turn over of personnel, where are you going to have the time to do proper background checks and get the loyalty out of people who feel they may not be around for long, because with this NSPS it doens't assure longevity for people's careers. Are people still asked to give the loyalty oath? And will that continue? The band pay reminds me of the old pacer share program, except there was no 10% downgrade in pay going on. There were quarterly pots of extra revenue paid out over and above the regular pay for all crews in the program. The general consensus around this office area is NSPS will be an Albatross around our necks and, demoralize the workforce and will be running the workforce out on a rail and the unemployment will go up and up. There hasn't been any positive outllooks and it's been quite the downer around here. I got on this the last day, because we've been encouraged and incited by our peers and leaders, etc. to speak up. OK this is a bad deal all around. There, I said it. My other concern is why can this NSPS conscript civilians and press them into worldwide service anytime NSPS deems? Is this a shanghai process? Does it cost too much to reactivate the DRAFT so this is a quicker, cheaper way, to add civilians to the military muscle? OK maybe folks will yell at me for saying that, but I had to put my confusion on that topic, out there. Because you work for the DOD as a civilian you can be whisked off to parts unknown like your a reservist? Well, the upper echelon of DOD will make sure they have their jobs untouched by all this and their families will be secure, while we the commoners, become shifted all about with NSPS. Cheers.