GovernmentExecutive.com

The Senate on Monday approved language that would limit the implementation of a controversial personnel system at the Defense Department, and authorized a 3.5 percent 2008 pay raise for members of the military.

The Senate voted 92-3 in favor of the fiscal 2008 Defense authorization bill, which would repeal the Pentagon's authority to implement the labor relations portions of its National Security Personnel System. The Senate action now moves the measure to conference committee negotiations.

The legislation would permit the Pentagon to continue developing a pay-for-performance system as long as such a system would be consistent with federal labor relations law. The bill also would exclude blue-collar workers from NSPS.

In the 2004 Defense authorization act, Congress granted the department authority to create a human resources system based on the notion that the current system was too rigid and outdated to allow an effective response to modern threats of terrorism.

Federal labor unions have been lobbying the Senate to pass NSPS repeal language, especially after an appeals court in May sided with Defense, ruling that the 2004 law grants the Pentagon the authority to curtail the collective bargaining rights of employees until November 2009. That ruling reversed a district court decision that struck down the labor relations changes.

According to the unions, however, the Senate language on NSPS is much softer than that in the House-passed version of the bill. A coalition of Defense labor unions sent a letter to lawmakers, urging inclusion of the House NSPS reform language and some Senate provisions in the final conference report.

"The DoD workforce has become a political football in an ideological attempt to strip away workers' rights, including the constitutional right to organize," the letter stated. "We are asking you to do nothing more than restore to DoD civilians the rights that they have enjoyed for dozens of years."

The House version of the bill would revoke the Pentagon's authority to reform adverse actions, appeals and labor relations. The bill also would require the department to consider input from unions.

Additionally, the House bill would exempt employees working at the 10 Defense laboratories from NSPS until Oct. 1, 2011. Lab employees have been working under an alternate personnel system called Lab Demo since 1995, but under the 2004 law, the Pentagon would have the authority to bring lab employees into NSPS on Oct. 1, 2008. Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, introduced a bill in April that would make the exemption permanent.

Mary Lacey, program executive officer for NSPS, said last month that the House version of the authorization bill "imposes such burdensome processes for the HR system that it effectively revokes critical flexibilities."

"The House authorization bill requires us to bargain 1,560 times," Lacey said, adding the department would like to have the ability to bargain on a national level for certain policies at the department, such as drug testing, and on the local level for local implementation.

Richard Brown, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said the unions will push conferees to consider the Senate provision that would exempt blue-collar workers from NSPS. "Blue-collar workers have a job to do, and they do it," he said. "Pitting one worker against another for discretionary pay would only cause problems. It could create safety issues and it would likely hurt teamwork, which on many jobs is critical to efficiency."

Meanwhile, the Senate also approved a 3.5 percent pay raise for military members. That figure, which is half a percent higher than the raise proposed by the Bush administration, is equal to the raise already backed by the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee for federal civilian employees.

COMMENTS

• The more I read, make phase one of NSPS for supervisors only! Bet that will never happen, when in fact, that is the problem every poster (poser) and congress seems to think they fixing. Wrong am I, tell me how? If management cannot live up to the pay for performance, then why should the workers? Now that said, answer why the managers cannot fire a non-performing employee without 5 years of non stop effort with PIP's and letters of reprimand (both systems will require this kind of effort)? tje Posted December 9, 2007 10:36 AM
• The commotion is over an unnecessary system, which costs valuable taxpayer dollars to implement, when there is a perfectly salvagable system already in place. The current system personnel system is not the problem, the problem is managers who do not do their jobs to eliminate non-performers. I gather from your comments that you must be currently a military service member or former service member. There seems to be a huge misconception that federal workers do not have to work for their pay and that step increases are automatic. Both of those beliefs are untrue. The majority of federal workers earn every penny and more, while some workers (the same workers who will be protected under NSPS by incompetent managers their friends with) kiss up, don’t perform and get rewarded. NSPS does nothing to eliminate human biases. Frankly, biases can’t be eliminated by legislation. Automatic step increases, are not automatic. Before an employee receives a step increase, his/her supervisor receives a notice of personnel action inquiring whether or not the employee has met the prerequisites for the step increase(performance, waiting period). If the employee has not met those prerequisites the supervisor annotates such. It’s when the supervisor chooses to misrepresent the truth that he problems arise. It leads many in the public to believe that federal employees do not have to earn their pay. Also excessive amounts of leave without pay can postpone that so-called automatic step increase. The amount of time between steps varies depending on the step number. Military benefits may have eroded, but so have the benefits of federal employees, not to mention that federal employees pay substantially more for their benefits. You can take two personnel(one military, one civilian) from the same office performing the same job and put them side by side, with an equal number of years service(and assume they both have dependents) and see which one is better off. Take a GS-7 and an E-7 in the DC metro are with over 20 years for example. The GS-7 can earn between $37,640-48,933(including locality pay) while the E-7 earns $43,728/yr in basic pay + $26,652/yr for BAH. Now, which one is better off. Without the BAH, they’d both be in the same boat. Without it, the service member is the more fortunate one. sd Posted October 12, 2007 4:28 PM
• "Let's see how that would work out: with a 3.5% cost of living increase and Health Insurance going up 2.9%. If Defense Secretary Robert Gates gets his way your salary will be reduced by 6.4%." I enjoyed your enthusiam but your math is TERRIBLE! The % increase in healthcare cost can NOT be directly added to possible lose of the COLA as you are implying. For one, the % of your income compared to your healthcare plan cost varies based on your INCOME and the plan you chose. My healthcare plan is 4.53% of my total annual salary. If my healthcare plan goes up by 2.9% that translates into my healthcare plan being 4.71% of my total income with no increase to my income. Then if my pay raise is supposed to be 3.5% of my BASE pay, my health plan now costs 4.55% of my total income. Then when they take half of my COLA i expected, my healthcare plan becomes 4.63% of my total pay. In short my Healthcare plan premium increase will rob me of 4.64 - 4.53 = 0.12% of my total pay. Basically i'll be paying 1/10 of 1% more than i did last year in healthcare plan premium. The half other half of the COLA that your not going to get isn't really a loss, so you can't actually count that in. I personally think we should still get COLA's under NSPS, but thats not the way the system reads. I don't think people realized that step increases were PERFORMANCE based...the problem was they were also time restricted, and somehow people got the wierd notion it was automatic. With NSPS you get ZERO COLA, but you can bet your sweet behind that heatlhcare will go up. NSPS takes everything, and gives nothing. be afraid. I have graduated college 2 years ago, and have only been a DoD employee for 1 year now...and NSPS reeks of corruptablity! I am not saying that the current GS system is perfect, but its less open to political sway thats for sure. Also i think that we should properly utilize parts of government to help us better run other parts of the government. For instance, the departmnet of labor spends a ton of money figuring out what the CPI. Why doesn't Congress use that as the "Base" COLA, and then add more as they see fit to shorten the gap between Feds and Private Sector? valek Posted October 9, 2007 4:37 PM