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Comments needed
on Proposed NSPS Regulations by June 23, 2008
With the urging of
the American Federation of Government Employees,
Congress in January passed the 2008 Defense
Authorization Act, which restores collective bargaining
and places limits on the Defense Department’s ability to
divert 100 percent of employees’ annual increases into
so-called “pay-for-performance.” After going through the
Meet and Confer process, and dealing with several
lawsuits and court rulings, we realized that we could
not trust DoD to administer the new system properly. Our
skepticism is confirmed now that DoD has issued new
rules and once again proved that it is less than sincere
in making the National Security Personnel System (NSPS)
fair and transparent.
We Need Your
Help!
On May 22, 2008, DoD
and OPM published the revised proposed NSPS regulations
in the Federal Register. They are accepting
comments on the new regulations and we urge you to voice
your concerns on how theses new regulations will
negatively impact DoD employees. The regulations can be
found at
www.afge.org.
To comment on the regulations, go
to
Federal Rulemaking
Portal at:
http:// www.regulations.gov.
Once on that page, you
will see a section for “Comment or Submission”.
In that section, enter the document number, which is
NSPS-OPM-2008-0081. Then click “go”.
You will then be taken
to the comment page where you will be asked to fill out
your information and submit your comment.
There are two required
fields on this form. One is for “Category” and has a
drop-down menu with the following choices: “Agency,”
“Citizen,” “Professional Organization,” or “Union.” You
can choose to identify yourself however you like (most
likely “Union” or “Citizen”).
The other required
field is “Organization.” You can put “AFGE” in the
field; you could put “Citizen” in the field; or even
“Employee” – it is up to you.
We have provided below
a few of the reasons why NSPS is bad for DoD employees.
Feel free to use them, or tell your own personal
story. Be sure to put in your comments that the agency
is DoD, the document number NSPS-
OPM-2008-0081 and the RIN is 3206-AL62.
After you have completed your comments or added an
attachment, click on “Next Step” where you can
preview your comments and print them. Then click on “Submit.”
You should also
encourage as many bargaining unit members, friends,
family, etc. to send in comments, as well.
PLEASE RESPOND BY
MONDAY JUNE 23, 2008! LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!
The following
are a few of the reasons why DoD civilians will be worse
off under NSPS :
Performance
payouts:
Under the proposed rules, § 9901.405(b)(5), employees
are rated from Level 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest.
Then, according to § 9901.342(f) and (g) they will be
given a certain number of shares that will be assigned a
value and turned into their performance pay. If they are
rated Level 1 (unacceptable) and Level 2 (Fair), they
are not getting any share. They get either 1 or 2 shares
if they are Level 3 (Valued Performer). They get either
3 or 4 shares if they are Level 4 (Exceeds
Expectations). They get either 5 or 6 shares if they are
level 5 (Role Model).
But the problem is,
two people can get the same rating but not the same
number of shares and thus pay. Working behind closed
doors, supervisors and managers will decide who gets
more performance pay. They will use several factors,
including those that have nothing to do with the
employee’s performance, such as labor market and
retention problems. Professor Charles Tiefer, an expert
on federal personnel at the University of Baltimore,
School of Law, summed it up best when he recently told
Congress that DoD is basically “translating identical
ratings into different raises by nontransparent and
somewhat arbitrary methods.”
To make things worse,
those shares are not all raises, which are counted
toward retirement annuities. These shares could be a
raise, a cash bonus, or a combination of both. (See §
9901.342(g)(3) and (4)). The factors used in determining
if they’re going to get a raise or a bonus are even more
complicated and, again, can have nothing to do with
performance. Employees have no control over many of
these factors, which include attrition rates, shortages
of skills, and labor market. Obviously, this really
isn’t a true pay-for-performance system.
Furthermore,
employees may not know what their supervisors
recommended for them, but will only be told their
evaluations and shares after the ratings are either
approved or changed by the Pay Pool Manager. (See §
9901.412). According to § 9901.413, even though the
employee can appeal his or her rating through an
arbitrator, who is authorized to change the rating, the
number of shares and whether the payout will be given as
a raise or a bonus will be decided by the Pay Pool
Panel, which has every incentive to give the employee
the least amount of money if the arbitrator found that
the panel’s original rating is wrong.
The way the system is
set up is very vulnerable to favoritism, communications
issues, attitudes, and personal biases. Last year, in an
agency-wide grievance arbitration, the arbitrator found
systematic age and race discrimination among thousands
of Securities and Exchange Commission employees covered
under pay-for-performance.
Control points:
Under NSPS, employees are assigned to one of the four
career groups and then a pay schedule and pay band for
their positions. Control points are maximum pay caps for
specific positions within a pay band. Under the proposed
rules, § 9901.321(c), DoD can create and adjust these
pay caps to “manage” compensation. In other words, the
rules allow DoD to create a glass ceiling that prevents
one employee from advancing to the top of the pay band
no matter how good his or her performance is while
another employee in the same pay band moves to the top.
It also creates a misconception that if the employee is
in one pay band, he or she can actually move to the top
when in reality that’s not the case.
Promotion/reassignment:
Under the proposed rules, § 9901.353, a supervisor may
reassign an employee to higher level duties within a pay
band and authorize a salary increase of up to 5% without
competition. Other employees may not even realize
there’s a new position, let alone be able to compete for
it.
Retirement
benefits:
If an employee is at the top of a pay band at the time
of the performance payout, any shares awarded to them
will be paid out as a one-time bonus and not a pay
raise. (See §9901.342(g)(3)). This means their
retirement benefits will be a lot smaller as bonuses are
not counted toward retirement. Although employees at
step 10 of their grade in the GS system are also at the
top, they would get the full General Pay Increase that
Congress and the President authorize each year. An
employee at the top of the band under NSPS would only
get 60% of the annual GS raise, and that only because
the 2008 law requires it.
Scope of
bargaining:
The 2008 law restored collective bargaining rights to
DoD employees. The proposed rules, however, appear to be
designed to limit the scope of bargaining. In §
9901.305, for example, DoD broadens the definition of
“rate of pay” to narrow the scope of bargaining. Rate of
pay is nonnegotiable in the 2008 law, but Congress made
sure to keep the procedures used to determine rates of
pay and appropriate arrangements for employees adversely
affected by that determination fully negotiable. In its
proposed rules, DoD defines “rate of pay” as an
employee’s base salary rate, local market supplement
rate, and overtime and other premium pay rates such as
compensatory time off. But then DoD adds the phrase “and
the conditions defining applicability of each rate” to
the definition of “rate of pay” as an attempt to narrow
the scope of bargaining because these “conditions” could
be interpreted to mean the very things Congress intended
to be negotiated.
These are just a
few reasons why AFGE and DoD civilians do not believe in
this pay system. We are urging you to reconsider this
cumbersome and complex system, which does not boost
employees’ morale but sinks it. NSPS is also inherently
age discriminatory - a class action suit waiting to
happen.
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Tell-a-friend!