AFGE Week in Review (Oct. 28, 2009)

The 2010 Defense Authorization Act signed by President Obama also contains several provisions relating to federal employees. The law:

*           Allows workers under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) to credit 50 percent of their unused sick leave toward their annuity. After a four-year phase-in period, FERS employees will receive full credit for unused sick leave.

*           Moves federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Island to the locality pay system and phases out their cost-of-living adjustments.

*           Permits federal agencies to re-employ federal retirees on a limited, part-time basis without forcing them to take a cut in their annuity checks.

Gives employees who work for the District of Columbia Courts, the Pretrial Services Agency, the Department of Corrections, and the Adult Probation and Parole Services credit for their time in service before the agencies were transferred to the federal government.

AFGE Week in Review (Oct. 28, 2009)

Obama Signs Bill to Repeal NSPS: After six long years of congressional hearings and court fights, AFGE was finally able to shut down the Pentagon's National Security Personnel System when President Obama on Oct. 28 signed the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization Act with a provision repealing the controversial pay system. The law requires the Defense Department to return the 205,000 NSPS employees to their previous pay systems by Jan.1, 2012. It guarantees that NSPS employees won't see any pay cuts and that they will receive the full pay hikes given to General Schedule workers. It directs DoD to work with the Office of Personnel Management to create a fair, credible and transparent performance appraisal system. It also gives DoD the authority to propose new personnel flexibilities that need to be approved by Congress.

AFGE President John Gage lauded President Obama and Congress' decision to shut down the system, saying NSPS was created in a poisonous atmosphere by ideologues seeking to destroy collective bargaining, federal unions and employee rights and protections.

"We look forward to working with the department to improve the performance management and hiring systems so that the needs of the taxpayers, war fighters, and employees can all be addressed," he said.

From GovExec.com

By Alyssa Rosenberg
October 23, 2009

The Defense Department's controversial pay-for-performance system is headed for repeal, and there are several ways the dismantling of the National Security Personnel System could proceed, say advocates and employee groups.

The fiscal 2010 Defense authorization legislation, which is on its way to President Obama, requires the Pentagon to begin returning the 200,000 employees covered by NSPS to their previous pay systems within six months of the law's enactment. All affected employees must be back in their previous pay systems by Jan. 1, 2012.

But Robert Tobias, director of the Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation at American University, and one of the members of a panel appointed by the Defense Business Board to study NSPS this summer, said that timeline gave Defense and the Office of Personnel Management six months to come up with a new government wide performance evaluation and pay structure. The Defense Business Board report released in August recommended that the Pentagon maintain a commitment to performance management established by NSPS, while also suggesting major overhauls to the system.

The conference report passed by both chambers requires the Defense secretary and OPM director to work together on a new personnel system for Defense. But if they can design a new system before the six-month deadline to begin moving Defense employees into their prior pay systems, the department could simply move them into a new performance management system.

"I don't think it's an impossible time period. I think it can be done. And I think it should be done," Tobias said.

Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, said he hoped the six-month deadline for the transition would give both the Pentagon and OPM a sense of urgency about moving forward with a new comprehensive performance evaluation system.

"Change is already hard, and the transaction costs are huge," Stier said. "There should be a strong premium placed on minimizing the disruptions involved in moving people from system to system. NSPS clearly didn't work, but I don't think the General Schedule does either. Simply settling for the status quo is not an option."

Beth Moten, legislative director for the American Federation of Government Employees, said a new system could be compatible with the General Schedule, and reinvigorate it.

"We believe they could develop a new performance management system that would have a lot of credibility with employees, and [would clarify] what managers need to be doing to encourage the best possible product," she said.

Moten said her union had not received clear guidance from Defense about how a rollback of NSPS would proceed. And Tobias and Stier acknowledged that the six-month timeline was tight for developing a new system. But Moten said repealing NSPS had cleared the air considerably for future discussions about performance management.

"We have been pretty public about our unwillingness to dig into a question of government wide performance management until NSPS was killed," she said. "If they weren't going to kill a pay system that was clearly discriminatory, it made it much harder for us to talk to them about anything."

From GovExec.com

October 22, 2009

By Alyssa Rosenberg

President Obama's signature is the only obstacle remaining to a full repeal

of the Pentagon's pay-for-performance arrangement, after the Senate passed
legislation that would roll back the controversial system and provide

members of the armed forces with a 3.4 percent pay raise in 2010.

The Senate on Thursday approved the final version of the fiscal 2010 Defense
authorization bill by a vote of 68-29, sending it to the president's desk.
In addition to language dismantling the National Security Personnel System

and allowing a military pay raise 0.5 percentage points higher than that

requested by Obama, the measure contains significant changes to federal

retirement law.

The final version of the policy bill repeals NSPS in full and requires that

all NSPS employees return to their previous pay system by Jan. 1, 2012. It

asks the Defense secretary to begin moving NSPS employees back into their

old pay system within six months, and prohibits the Pentagon from decreasing

the salaries of employees who got raises under NSPS. Until they are returned

to their old pay systems, NSPS employees will be guaranteed the full pay

hikes given to General Schedule workers.

The bill also sets the course for changes in how Defense Department

employees are evaluated. It directs the Defense secretary to work with the

Office of Personnel Management chief to create a "fair, credible and

transparent" performance appraisal system for employees and a similar system

"for linking employee bonuses and other performance-based actions to

performance appraisals of employees." Employees are to receive "performance

assistance plans," giving them access to on-the-job training and mentoring.

The bill also gives the Defense secretary the ability to propose new

personnel flexibilities, pending congressional approval.

Beyond the Defense Department, the final authorization bill contains

government wide changes to retirement rules, including a provision that

would allow workers in the Federal Employees Retirement System to count

unused sick leave toward their retirement. Until Dec. 31, 2013, employees

would receive 50 percent credit for unused sick time; they would receive

full credit beginning on Jan. 1, 2014.

The bill also allows federal retirees to return to government for limited,

part-time appointments without having to take cuts in their annuities. And

it will let employees who work part time before they retire use higher

salary figures to calculate how that work factors into their retirement

benefits. FERS employees who left and returned to government service would

be able to redeposit savings in the retirement system and earn credit for

years they already worked in government.

In addition, the bill moves federal employees who work outside the

continental United States from a cost-of-living-adjustment system into the

locality pay system. COLA payments do not count toward retirement

calculations, and they are not matched as part of Thrift Savings Plan

contributions.

The leaders of federal employee groups praised the legislation, and urged
President Obama to sign it swiftly.

"The administration and Congress have tasked federal employees with immense

responsibility in the face of an ambitious agenda to restructure the federal

government's role in the delivery of services to the American public," said

Darryl Perkinson, president of the Federal Managers Association. "We need

experienced individuals to lend their expertise as we tackle the challenges

ahead and to mentor those who will serve the nation in the future. Signing

this bill into law will ensure the federal government builds on its

successes as we transition to the next generation of public servants."

Randy Erwin, legislative director for the National Federation of Federal

Employees, praised the provision ending NSPS, noting the union has been

battling the pay system for six years. "Had NSPS been implemented as first

proposed, federal employee unions probably would not even exist today," he

said. "DoD would have stripped our right to collectively bargain and we

would have disappeared."

From AFGE.org

October 7, 2009 

(WASHINGTON) - Today, the American Federation of Government Employees

(AFGE), AFL-CIO, lauded the decision of the 2010 Defense authorization

conferees to repeal NSPS. John Gage, AFGE national president, said, "This

day has been a long time coming. We greatly appreciate Chairman Skelton,

Chairman Levin, and the ranking members, Representative McKeon and Senator

McCain, for their courageous decision to repeal the fatally-flawed NSPS pay

system. After numerous Congressional hearings as well as analysis by the

Department's own Defense Business Board task group, the evidence was all on

the side of repeal. The Congress had generously given the Department six

years to develop a fair pay system, ample opportunity to correct its

mistakes, and finally determined that the system could not be - and should

not be -- saved."

NSPS was created in a poisonous atmosphere by ideologues seeking to destroy

collective bargaining, federal unions and employee rights and protections.

Through various defense authorization bills, some of those rights -

collective bargaining and employee appeal rights - were restored. But the

NSPS pay system is costly, unwieldy, discriminatory, complicated, opaque,

and mistrusted by DoD civilian employees at all levels.

AFGE looks forward to working with the Department to improve the performance

management and hiring systems so that the needs of the taxpayers, war

fighters, and employees can all be addressed.

The defense authorization conference report also includes language from the

House version which will credit FERS employees with their unused sick leave

when they retire. This is a critical issue of equity with employees covered

by the Civil Service Retirement System. The report also provides for the

conversion of non-foreign COLA to locality pay for employees in Alaska,

Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. In addition, it corrects

a longstanding retirement equity problem for employees in the District of

Columbia Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) that has

required some CSOSA employees to work 10 additional years to meet required

credits for federal retirement eligibility.

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Full Senate Report:

http://armed-services.senate.gov/press/NDAA%20FY10%20Conference%20Press%20Release.pdf

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest

federal employee union, representing 600,000 workers in the federal

government and the government of the District of Columbia.