| Comment Number: | OL-10512245 |
| Received: | 3/17/2005 12:36:08 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:
One goal of NSPS is to give managers/bosses more flexibility/control over their employees under the assumption this will create a better workforce. This is a fatal assumption as my experience in DOD shows. Giving bad managers more control just creates more problems. Employees, not supervisors, are the ones getting the job done and making successful organizations: Case Study: Tinker Air Force Base. I was hired about 16 years ago straight out of college into a professional job series, on a training program. I was flag-waving and naively expected that of everyone else. After all, it was the Air Force, true blue, right? Well, my first boss was married but having an open affair with a married engineer. My next boss, one year later, was a biased. He called one secretary a dumb mexican to her face and told the women they should be at home raising babies and not doing men's work. This boss's golden boy employee came back from an EEO briefing and said to me that there wouldn't be a problem with sexual harrassment if the women would stay at home and quit taking jobs away from men. He was promoted and is now a GS-14 at Tinker. I was RIF'd by the same boss. Mind you, the golden boy and I had the same rating on our performance appraisals. One day, one of the higher graded men snitched some pictures of the secretary wearing a bikini, and posted them to the branch bulletin board. She was mortified but too afraid to remove them. I did it for her and then got into trouble for that. One time, someone in the office bought in brownies laced with laxatives. Several people were sick for days. The bosses did not investigate, though they did offer administrative leave in lieu of sick leave. After I was RIF'd, one of my bosses, a man, lost a sexual harrassment complaint. He used to have posters of scantily clad women sprawling across hot rod cars displayed in his office. He groped a secretary. Punishment? He was moved to a non-supervisory job of same grade. The gravy train. That type of discipline has been repeated innumerable times across Tinker. Why, they even named a conference room after one of these bosses that would grope women on their way in/out of briefings. He also specialized in degrading/embarassing women in public. My next boss after the disciplined boss was a female. I had hopes for her, but I was wrong. She played favorites and often went to lunch off-campus with them. The favorites were granted special privileges regarding leave, overtime, special projects, etc. She was sighted with these favorites several times during duty hours, by another worker, shopping at places like Hobby Lobby. A coworker and I finally had enough of that and what it was doing to morale. We complained to the Tinker IG. We even offered to get video evidence. He, being an arm of management, said there was nothing he could do. We would need 20 or more employees to sign a complaint. He could not use our video and did not have time or manpower to devote to this. This IG, so-called, is now retired. In my next job, I saw even more managerial offenses. One boss hired her daughter. This happens alot. One boss whose wife also works here, went to his wife's second level boss and demanded his wife's appraisal be changed to 81, or perfect score. The 2nd level boss granted the change, though the 1st level protested it. I would run out of space if I told all the things I've seen. Bosses cover for each other. One military boss was preventing items being shipped overseas to the warfighters. This albatross retired, yet the organization rehired him! We employees put up with alot and get no credit, but most of the blame. Morale and employee behavior would be better if we had better managers as examples. We don't need a new NSPS. We need to train the managers in humanity, integrity, values, etc. The government's dirty little secrets like those mentioned above, will explode in number when NSPS gives power to the perpetrators