| Comment Number: | OL-10511964 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 6:55:01 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:
Comment Identifier: Proposed “National Security Personnel System (NSPS)” Regulations (RIN 3206-AK76/0790-AH82 and Docket Number NSPS-2005-001) This proposed personnel system, instead of fostering the National Defense, would end up instilling in DoD employees a fear over management’s perception of their “performance” to the point of blunting its stated superior qualities over the present GS personnel system. This is because, under this proposed personnel system, employees would focus on their fear of not giving their supervisors and managers cause for reducing their pay from the proposed pay pool for reasons of their management's claiming that the employees’ "performance" was insufficient. As a consequence of this fear, employees will avoid raising important issues with management, like bad news, speaking up when they notice a dot needing connecting (to borrow from the 9/11 Commission’s findings), something being neglected, done wrong, wasteful, unsafe, etc. Employees’ fear would be fostered by the following deficiencies in this proposed personnel system: (1) The extremely complex system proposed for distributing performance-based pay. (Under the GS pay system you at least know where you stand.) (2) The lack of details specifying how management will actually measure performance, keep it “fair, credible, and transparent” [Sec. 9901.401 Purpose, Item (b) (2)], and provide “effective safeguards to ensure that the management of the system is fair and equitable and based on employee performance” [Sec. 9901.401 Purpose, Item (b) (7)]. In particular, it does not specify safeguards preventing unethical supervisors and managers from using it to practice cronyism and nepotism (despite current regulations against the latter) at other employees’ expense. (3) The lack of details specifying effective enforcement of how supervisors and managers would be held “accountable for effectively managing the performance of employees under their supervision” [Sec. 9901.405 Performance management system requirements, Paragraph (b) (4)], along with how it will be demonstrated to employees that this effective enforcement is actually taking place. (4) The curtailing of collective bargaining/labor organization rights without explaining what such curtailment has to do with “National Security” in the post-Cold War World, as opposed to the weakening of unions. For one of the key benefits of unions is that they allow employees to raise important issues with management without fear of discrimination, retaliation, etc. These proposed regulations (Sec. 9901.912 Determination of appropriate units for labor organization representation) decrease the opportunities for employees to even be allowed to form collective bargaining units in the first place. Thus, this proposed personnel system has inadequate safeguards to prevent its implementation causing the DoD civil service to devolve into a mob of "Yes Men (and Women)" not wanting to offend management while focusing on “pay-for-performance,” rather than on National Defense. This is why such a personnel system, which might work well in the business sector (although, in that sector, employees’ unionizing opportunities supposedly aren’t restricted by “National Security”), would not work well in the DoD civil service where the stakes are so much higher.