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The Bush administration is pushing ahead with its plan to reform the personnel system for all federal workers, releasing an updated draft of legislation Tuesday that would do so.

The Office of Management and Budget released a draft of the Working for America Act, previously known as the 2005 Civil Service Modernization Act of 2005. Government Executive obtained an earlier draft of the proposal in June.

On Tuesday, Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, said there was "lots of misunderstanding" surrounding the previous draft.

For one thing, Johnson said it was a misconception that the bill would simply take the new Defense and Homeland Security departments' personnel systems and apply them governmentwide. Johnson said that agencies other than Defense and DHS "don't have the same need for urgent action" in their decision-making and so would not need to curtail unions' collective bargaining rights.

For that reason, Johnson said the government should not wait to see how the implementation of those two systems play out before enacting governmentwide reforms, as some members of Congress have suggested. He gave the examples of the Labor and Health and Human Services departments as agencies "better equipped" to handle personnel changes sooner than the Pentagon or DHS.

A major pillar of both drafts is replacing the General Schedule pay structure with a pay-for-performance system phased in by 2010. But Johnson called the term "pay-for-performance" an "incorrect shorthand." He said that unlike the systems at the Pentagon and DHS, agencies will not be allowed to implement such merit-based pay systems until the Office of Personnel Management certifies the agency as capable of doing so.

The new draft legislation replaces Title II of the bill's title "Pay For Performance" with the title "Results-Driven, Market-Based Compensation." However, it retains the phrase -- "the core compensation system is designed to provide contemporary and flexible position classification and performance-based pay" -- almost verbatim to describe the system, as well as much of the other language defining it.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 federal workers, called the proposed legislation "counterproductive and fatally flawed." In a statement released Tuesday, NTEU President Colleen Kelley challenged the idea that the proposed reforms are substantially different from the new DHS system.

"The broad pay proposal the administration wants to impose would largely mimic that which has been suggested for DHS," Kelley said. She said NTEU is "strenuously opposed to expanding this still unproven system."

Despite OMB's assertion that collective bargaining rights will not be significantly altered, Kelley said the proposal includes "serious restrictions on collective bargain as it exists today, and there is absolutely no need for any of it because these agencies are not Homeland Security or Defense."

Johnson stressed that employees' job performance would only affect one part of their annual pay increase and would not be a factor in national and locality-based salary adjustments passed by Congress each year, except for employees who receive a rating of "less than fully successful." The only part of the pay raise that would be tied to performance is the approximately 2 percent of federal spending on salary increases each year that is devoted to step increases in the GS system.

The legislation will be available online starting tomorrow, according to an OMB spokesperson. Johnson said he would wait to get the bill introduced in Congress until "people have time to turn attention to this," but hoped to get it done during the 109th Congress.

COMMENTS

• I am a GS-5 secretary and have five years left to retirement. I also am a former union steward. I have read many disheartening, discouraging, and just plain "idiot" plans for this reform. There is no doubt that most of the time "change and reform" can make things better; but with all the hoopla and the Bush Administration's headstrong attitudes that they "will" implement this change no matter who doesn't want it, I have one comment. Those of us who have made our career doing the best job we can in our "lowly, everyday positions" would like to ask the president and lawmakers, "Why don't you live on and make your budget on our paychecks and then see how well people will like this ‘new’ plan?" Furthermore, if civilian government workers’ jobs are tied to "pay for performance," the same should go for the military. I have seen too many eprs/oprs that have been highly inflated to further careers, when if their job performance was tied to their paychecks, they would do a better job or be forced out of the service! If the pay for performance of the executive branch of our government, including the president, was instituted, they would owe the "people" lots of dollars for their bungling in Iraq, etc.!!!! Sandra Kunkle Sandra Kunkle Posted October 13, 2005 11:11 AM
• Non-Performer, It's starting to look to me like legal action is going to be a regular part of many agents' jobs in the near future. I work for an office where the supervisors are hand-picked by the SAC. Some have no investigative experience, but all are friendly with the SAC. These people are the only ones who have any access to the SAC and their word, their complaints, their bad-mouthing of any agent they dislike, is the only source of information about agents' performance that the SAC receives. The INS groups - the ones that sit in jails and say, "Where were you born?" to prisoners all day - are used as punishment assignments for agents who aren't liked by their supervisors. The administrative or support groups are used in the same way. All of our punishment groups are filled while investigative groups become even more short-handed. I've never seen anyone come out of punishment, because then these supervisors would have to do their jobs. The good old boy in my office is a good old girl and her cronies, and good agents are suffering. We have senior agents with great experience and great working relationships with other agents, the U. S. Attorney's office, DEA, the inspectors, etc. yanked out of their own investigations without anyone in the agency talking to them about any perceived problems or issues. It doesn't matter if the issues are created by the supervisors' actions (we have one who disappeared for the majority of every day to spend time with the office intern - he couldn't do it at night - he was married to another agent. Yes, he's still here and so is the other supervisor he got into an accident with in both their g-cars - drunk). No one but the working agents will ever know that. Pay for performance? Better scrap the entire management structure first. Soon to be Former Posted August 6, 2005 3:58 PM
• Back when I was working, I knew a retired NYPD Sgt. who took on a second career with US Customs. He mentioned an episode from his previous police career...While standing on a busy street corner, he was approached and berated by a pedestrian for 'not doing anything'. He replied: "Sir, since I've been here for about ten minutes, the bank across the street hasn't been robbed, no one has been mugged, and all the drivers are obeying the traffic signals". The man looked at him, apologized and left! Well, that's how it is in law enforcement. When I worked in the VA many years ago, we (as benefits counselors)had to produce so many interviews per day to keep our jobs. Of course the managers received bonuses at year's end based on the numbers. It worked out to (14)minutes per personal interview, and about (6)minutes per phone call. There's your pay-for-performance in action. GovExec.com reader Posted July 21, 2005 4:13 PM