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Return to Article: DHS scales back pay for performance ambitions

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  For a change, a sincere heartfelt message to my still-working colleagues, it's time to leave! This sham of a program simply reflects the gutting of the civil service system under President Shrub. Honesty, professionalism, courtesy, and ability are not part of this farce. If you still can't kick the work habit, become a contractor, and perhaps improve that sad bunch of crooks. Or, retire and enjoy your "last 30" or so. But don't believe that things will ever get better under a possible Democratic president, because they won't.

  GovExec.com reader Posted March 2, 2007 9:36 AM
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  How many millions of dollars were wasted on MaxHR, which was badly flawed from it's inception? DHS employees overwhelmingly submitted negative comments during the public comment period before it was initially implemented, but were ignored by DHS managers. No wonder it failed so badly! Headquarters is an ivory tower, with no conception of what it means to work in the trenches. DHS resembles a bad nature documentary, in which 22 different species of animals are thrown together in one cage. Is anyone surprised by the result?

  GovExec.com reader Posted March 1, 2007 4:07 PM
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  This is just another name for MaxHR, and just as ridiculous. DHS will try to shove this down our throats too, like everything else it does, regardless of whether it makes sense, or is the right thing to do.

  On this fourth anniversary of the birth of DHS, I feel like mourning instead of celebrating. It looks like DHS management has come up with a new slogan, "We Dictate, You Obey"!

  GovExec.com reader Posted March 1, 2007 4:00 PM
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  This Department just doesn't get it; never will. From the onset, the management mantra has been we are going to force these concepts and principles upon the employees come "Hell or High Water".

  Is it me, or does anyone else find it interesting that DHS commissioned a "Culture Task Force" which implicitly recommended that the phrase "human capital" not be used?

  Yet, true to form, DHS does not want to accept any criticism or recommendations that do not originate from the mahogany halls of the Department. This is evidenced by the newly titled "Human Capital Operation Plan". I wonder how many taxpayer dollars were spent to have the "Culture Task Force" recommend not using the phrase "human capital" only to have the department regenerate the phrase in a major personnel initiative.

  Joe Customs - 1789 Posted March 1, 2007 12:22 PM
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  When are these people going to learn. "Human Capital" is a derogatory term to employees. It treats us as something to spend and use up. Just like they use up their budget so they don't lose it the next year. They might as well call us "human cattle to herd around as they please then slaughter us in the end".

  Ray Bielicke Posted March 1, 2007 9:01 AM
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  Every DHS employee needs to heed the following information right now. There is one certainty about the trial period of the DHS performance-based pay system: It is a foregone conclusion that DHS officials and spokespeople will tout this trial period as demonstrating positive results, and they will relentlessly and shamelessly claim that the trial period proves the merits of shifting all DHS personnel into the performance-based system. This is not a "trial" period at all. This is merely another technicality and the outcome has already been determined. It does not matter what transpires under this trial period and what the responses of employees are to its results. DHS officials have already decided that the entire department is going to transition to a new system and this trial period is nothing more than another DHS sham that separates our pay system today from what DHS has already decided they will force into existence at the completion of the "trial". These people possess no dignity, no integrity, and they are artful masters of deceit and propaganda.

  We've done well to fight and postpone this so far (thanks to the fight of the unions), but there is a long way to go. It is incumbent upon all of us to see to it that the campaign for a performance-based pay system is destroyed. Write your Congressmen and Senators to withhold any and all funding for this system, detail the dangers of the corruption it brings (give specific examples about how cash awards are historically and notoriously abused), and request them to kill this plan. Remember, this won't be over until at least 2009 after that "trial" period. We have to stay on top of this and see this all the way through to kill this.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 28, 2007 9:36 PM