Return to Article: OMB to seek governmentwide personnel reform
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10009
I recently witnessed the most horrendous display of politics of personal destruction and the ugliest face of self-preservation and betrayal I'd ever seen in all my years in civil service. Some of you who are reading this can relate to the following: You put in 12-14 hour days, putting your heart and soul into your job, working at home, working weekends, using your own money for the mission to expedite it's success, putting your job ahead of your own health concerns and that of your family all the while knowing there's no way you can save the Titanic you're "responsible" for saving. And then told you aren't working hard enough at it. Can you concieve how absurd that all is? I oppose NSPS because I witnessed and experienced what amounts to this example and how easy I saw it is for supervisors and leadership to effectively make someone the scapegoat for their failures. NSPS will facilitate this kind of abuse of federal workers, and don't tell me about safeguards and appeals processes. They'll amount to nothing.
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8238
I cannot believe that as smart as we Americans are, that we are just clacking about how Bush and company will "deep six" civil service, and we are just going to "hide and watch" and do nothing about it! Since we work for the governmant what happened to "government for and by the people?" Where is the Congress in the goat rope of an operation. This reminds me of a situation when the hen hides and watches as the fox eats her baby chicks and does nothing about it!
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8206
Thank you, Judge Weir! The value of studying history is that it tends to repeat itself unless we learn from our past mistakes. Any form of government (or management system) would work if humans were all of an angelic ilk. Unfortunately, we are all of the same struggling, often broken, human race. That's why we have a multiple party system, why we have several separate branches of government, to some degree why we have a congress and a senate, why we need unions: checks and balances. Greed and power very often corrupt. The trappings of being at the top of the heap frequently blinds one to the reality of those not in the inner circle. Does anyone really believe the current administration is above all that? Christian? Professedly. Well-meaning? Perhaps. But immune from mistakes born of self-interest? Not on your life (or career)!
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8095
I find it absolutely amazing that they are so naive as to consider such a discriminatory system.!!!!
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8088
I know peole who have set their life goal on achieving a certain grade in Government service i.e. GS-12, GS-13, GS-14, or GS-15. These are symbols that have generally understood meaning an addition to the pay. This understanding exists inside as well as outside of Federal civil service. The DOD, of all governmental organizations, with its "rank equivalency factors" equates a GS-12 to a military officer pay grade 04 (major or Lieutenant Commander), GS-13 to a military officer pay grade 05 (lieutenant Colonel or Commander), etc. Under their National Security Personnel System (NSPS), I am told, a GS-12 or GS-13 may be converted to an entity referred to as a NH Level III or an NJ Level IV. I wonder how many generations it will take to make employees adopt an NH Level or a NJ level as their career goal in life? A relative of mine recently retired as a GS-14. In the back of my mind, I would like to be like him. How would I ever convince him or any of our family and friends that a NH Level IV is the same...or nearly the same....or whatever...
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8087
America's civil service system was invented after a national tragedy that occurred more than 120 years ago. In the summer of 1881 President Garfield was shot by a disgruntled federal office seeker. In those days nearly all federal jobs were political appointments. In order to get a federal job, one had to have connections with political parties. The civil service was invented to eliminate the political patronage system that had dominated the federal workforce. Today, while civil service employees make up the bulk of the federal workforce, the very senior senior positions in our government are still political appointees, some of them acknowledged and some of them tacit. I remember, in the early days of government personnel reform, under President Carter, there were bonuses awarded to reward good government service. In my agency the associate director, who was in charge of deciding who got these bonuses, decided that he got all of the bonus money himself and no-one else deserved a bonus. He made a speech to us about how all of our hard work helped him earn a large bonus. On a more recent note, remember the head actuary for the Medicare program (part of HHS) was, in effect, ordered to lie about the cost of the recent Medicare law passed in 2003. The director of his agency (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) told the actuary that he would be fired if he told Congress the true estimated cost for the Medicare drug benefit. Congress passed the legislation by the narrowests of margins (and the agency director, is now making large money in the private sector as a consultant on the new law)
The OMB proposal to change the federal personnel system will have the effect of eliminating the civil service system, and sending us back to the days of political patronage. The federal government is not a business. Its job is not to make profits for the business owner. It is a government, whose job is to serve the people who elect our government and carry out the public policy that our elected representatives dictate. Federal managers are not business managers. They are managers in a political system. The elimination of the civil service system, will put politics back in the driver's seat of our government personnel system. I urge OMB and the White House to rethink this proposal.
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8086
I have worked for the US Government since 1980 - 25 years and I have 631 days until retirement. If offered an early out - I'd grab it and run!!!!!!!!! I used to enjoy my work - now its a job. In the last 10-12 years, the politicians (Republicans & Democrats) with few exceptions have tried to ruin Federal Employment. They have grandiose ideas with no logic or planning. They don't care that we have families, mortgages, etc. They only care about the next soundbyte on TV, cable, or radio.
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8081
Come on, guys, get in touch. The first rule of management is the same as the first rule of business: A business will never, ever do anything that is for the good of the customer . . . it might work out that way, but it will not be designed for that purpose, it will be designed for the benefit of the business.
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8077
For those of you who have perceived that this "pay for performance" is nothing more than an attempt to make the federal workforce 100% political patronage jobs...good for you because that is, in my opinion, the bottom line. Following the theory that has been expressed so far, you will get a raise only if you make the political appointees happy. Civil Servants, bah humbug!
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8075
I have only been in the government for 5 years, but I have unfortunately seen enough to understand the need to maintain the present system. The need for checks and balances is a correct observation, but not just for job advancements. I am more frightened by giving politicals in management positions more power. We need to be able to say no when they ask us to do things that are not within regulations. These people come and go. In that short time frame they do not care about regulations, but care about making a mark in whatever manner and paying back friends. At least the ones I have worked with have done these things and I refuse to do unethical things. Government should not work like private industries, because we need to maintain the power of the regulations that have been established. I want protection from unions so I can do right be the tax payers. I want to the right to say no to unethical situations and not be punished.
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8041
Dear Ray Finkle: If you work really hard and perform really well, but your manager doesn't give you a performance-based raise (perhaps because you are, say, a white male, or a black woman, or a little older, or once belonged to AFGE and still have a Bobby Harnage sticker on your desk), who will you protest to, now that MSBP is being gutted?
Answer: An in-house team of managers that oversees your manager. It's possible this in-house team will have brilliant, thoughtful, members, who do the right thing. Or, maybe not. At that point, your rights are null, because DoD/DHS/soon the rest of government have ditched the checks and balances that once kept management from doing whatever it wants.
It's a little hard to see how standing up for checks and balances makes one a socialist. After all, the concept came from the U.S. Constitution; a document that you, Mr. Finkle, might try reading some time.
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8038
Dearest Ray,
I'll resist the temptation to respond in kind with a "nahnah - nahnah - nah - nah" as you seem to have the "nitwit" thing covered. Besides, you sound like a typical Bush supporter; call anyone that disagrees with you names, engage in character assasination and/or outright slander. Say, are you by any chance related to the "Moron"? I am referring to a glee filled letter expressing the writers desire to see Civil Servants, "...get the drowning they so richly deserve." I have long suspected it was a submittal from Mr. George W. Bush.
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8036
You guys are killing me....Your unions have been sticking management in the eye for years and you are surprised that management has found a way to stop the pain. Your unions have endorsed recent candidates that are not even close to representing the position of most of you, they lean so far left I can't imagine how the Democrats even allow them on the Democratic ticket. Please don't get wrapped around the axle on my Democrat comment, I used to be one until people like Kennedy and Kerry and Boxer and Feinstein became the leadership of the party.
I spent 27 years working for the DOD, during that time I don't recall a single instance where any administration of any party had a real impact on the federal civil service. Not that they didn't try, but they were fought off, fought off by the very unions that now are not representing the mainstream employee.
Your federal employee unions are your problem, get them back to representing you, the mainstream federal employee and they have the juice to to stop any action they choose to stop. The fat cat leadership of the federal unions no longer are responsive to you, the federal employee. If you continue to let the leftist fat cats represent you, you are toast.....you will get exactly what management is planning for you.
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8029
In the words of a calendar quote I saw the other day, "When you meet a man who says that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"
Queen of Flunkies
And that you Socialist nitwit is why you are indeed the QUEEN of Flunkies and Losers.
Ray Finkle
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8027
I've got a comment for DoD. I used to work for the Navy in Philadelphia. They implemented pay banding in 1997 under the guise of experimentation in the workforce. Yes, the employees waived all their title 5 rights under the guise of "voluntarily entering" this program ... which the top dogs slid under the table and gave no chance for the experimentees to evaluate the written portion of the new "plan" and no time to comment. In fact, the "plan" was buried in the internet somewhere and had to be dug out. At the same time, there was a mysterious effort to get rid of the union...the only people that could stop the plan from being implemented. The best part is...the plan was only supposed to be for an "experimental" five years. But what do you think happened after 5 years? The plan was quietly declared a "success" - no doubt by those that were taken care of - and it became the law. Wise up, boys and girls...there is no experimental period. Once the plan is implemented...it's here to stay. Is it time to put Title 5 in the Smithsonian?
Ex-Dod and Glad to be.
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8023
First, in 1996, they took away the rights of employees of the FAA, saying a new flexibility was needed, And I didn't say a word, because I wasn't an FAA employee.
They took away the right to Union membership from thousands of workers who "held a security clearance", but I didn't hold a security clearance, so I didn't say anything.
They took away the right to organize and bargain collectively from the Airport Screeners of TSA with the stroke of a pen... But it didn't affect me, I didn't work checking people through metal detectors day after day for TSA, so I did nothing.
They took away the rights of employees of "The Department of Homeland Security" to appeal actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board, or to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, But I wasn't a DHS employee, so I simply read the article on Govexec and went back to work, glad I didn't work there.
They called it "improvements in human capital management" to allow managers to simply stop paying increases to employees, under "test programs" at NSPS and DoD, but I didn't work there, and besides, I didn't want to rock the boat, I figured I'd just be glad I had a job where I would be left alone and could work hard for the public. So I didn't do anything.
Then, they decided to cap FAA employee pay bands, and to freeze TSA LaGuardia guard pay, citing "market surveys" and "budget constraints" repectively. But I didn't work for those two agencies, so I said nothing.
Then, they announced that they were doing away with the GS schedule entirely....
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8022
This is not about improving the federal workforce. This is about stripping the rules which govern the hiring practices of the civil service; such as rules for the disabled and for veterans. This is the only way that Bush can do this in disguise, without making it obvious that he wants to discriminate against those who are at a disadvantage in employment in this country.
He wants to militarize the civilian, government workforce in this country. He will eliminate the Veterans Preference law the first thing (which already galls many) and then gut the rights of all disabled. He isn't after a better government workforce because if he was he would have fired half of his staff by now, including Rumsfeld.
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8021
You've all made good comments. Levon: I'm not sure anyone will stand up to Bush's bullies - some are indoctrinated, some are snowed. DoD: They don't need no stinkin' test period! They are "true believers" in the negative sense of the word, people who get so heavily invested in an idea or belief or position that they can't see sense when they trip on it. Old-timer: You may not be aware, but they want to turn all DOD people into "assets" deployable in 7 days to any organization in any geographical area. They could, in conjunction with this, do the old "stop-loss" thing and prevent you from leaving, or force you to come back, as they have some soldiers. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. HR Specialist: They not only want to go to an "at-will"/spoils/patronage system, but to a just-in-time labor system, where people are laid off one day, brought back the next, and laid off again on the third. You're right - the ultimate effect (and maybe goal) will be to destroy the reliable, stable workforce that has existed for decades. Welcome to the ownership society, America!!
If you all want to try to stop some of these enormities, make yourselves heard everywhere you can - write letters to the editor, enlist other employee groups, communicate with your Senators and Representatives. Keep an eye out for the actual publication of NSPS because there is only a 30-day comment period for us after that; any items not getting negative comments can be implemented immediately. We need to make so much noise that all Congress hears is us yelling. (After the first 30 days there is still a 30-day meet and confer period, which will probably not produce anything but lawsuits, and a 30-day Congressional notification period; until the end of that last 30 days we still have a chance. Be sure you legislators hear what you have to say!)
In the words of a calendar quote I saw the other day, "When you meet a man who says that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"
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8012
The Federal Register hasn't published the DHS final regs yet-- DoD NPSP isn't even a proposal yet and OMB is telling everyone that we will adopt these new systems.
It seems to me that the goal isn't to adopt a better system than in 5 CFR-- which is a noble goal since the current system does need changing, but rather the goal appears to be dismantling the federal personnel systems at any cost. The goal appears to be "at will" employment-- which translates historically into political patronage.
I can tell folks from experience that the cost will be very, very high-- perhaps even the viability of the American federal civil service. Of course if this administrations goal is to destroy the civil service, I can't think of a better way than the wholesale adoption of this new DHS system across the entire federal sector.
With FAA employees complaining about their salary caps and pay banding my advice is to SLOW DOWN. Rome wasn't built in a day- but it managed to burn down in a day while Empereror Nero fiddled. There is absolutely no reason to burn down the federal civil service system that has been in existence for decades. Where is the leadership to say we need to protect the civil service while making reasonable changes.
HR Specialist
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8008
So, let them kill the General Schedule... it'll be like hitting the LOTTO for alot of us old timers.... that is, Federal Civil Servants that Bush obviously considers of little or no value! Although a person can be RIF'ed from the General Schedule, they cannot be forced to switch other than through the intimidation of job loss by job elimination. Look up loss of job through no fault (ie, RIF'ed) and 50 years old with 20 or more years of service!
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8007
You would think that they would evaluate DoD for awhile before implementing a new personnel system governmentwide.
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7996
Clay wants to kill the General Schedule? Wow. Is anyone in Congress going to stand up to the Bush bullies?
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