The election is over. Speculations and news opinions are running rampant about what our new President Elect will be doing once in office.

On September 9^th 2008, President Elect Obama wrote a letter to National President John Gage stating the he would substantially revise these NSPS regulations, and strongly consider a complete repeal. A similar letter was also sent to the President of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. President Elect Obama continued in his letter to state…" that the elimination of collective bargaining was not the intent of Congress when the legislation, the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, was enacted." Until such time as the decision is made to revise or repeal NSPS, we must stay ever vigilant of the events that take place with NSPS. Your locals will need to engage Congress when it returns into session and tell your Senators and Congressmen to support the repeal of NSPS.

NSPS is not dead. President Gage is in process of setting up a meeting with the Department of Defense for a briefing and discussion on the NSPS Final Issuance(s). This should transpire sometime mid to late November. If you have been watching the situation, DOD is intending to proceed with the implementation of NSPS. Thanks to Senator Levin of Michigan and Congressman Skelton, the continued Spiral Implementation of NSPS for DOD employees has been placed on hold. But, with that said, DOD still is moving forward with the implementation of NSPS policy and procedures, and delegating some of its authority to their Agencies.

This is something that is very important not only to me but the entire Council. Because of the new system being finalized I have appointed two full time Council representatives to be the POC for NSPS. Madelon Gibson and Jack Meiss have undertaken this role. You will be receiving a briefing at the fall conference from Jack on NSPS. You should feel free to contact either one of them if you have any questions or need some help with issues affecting our bargaining unit members who are considering taking positions that fall under NSPS.

Virginia Hemingway has been sending out numerous messages about DEFCONs involvement in fighting NSPS and its attempts to collaborate with DOD on numerous issues and concerns. If you are not on the DEFCON mailing list, you need to contact Virginia immediately and be added to the list.

NSPS and DCMA:

Most nonbargaining unit employees have been transferred into the NSPS System within DCMA. The Council is still engaged with the Agency to resolve the proper classification of about 100 positions, these positions should be classified as bargaining unit and not placed under the rules of NSPS. If the Council and the Agency can not come to an agreement, this matter will be taken before the FLRA for a ruling.

Several bargaining unit employees are competing for promotion to Team Leader/Supervisor. The selected individuals that are promoted are then placed into NSPS. The application of the conversion rules are being challenged by our locals and Shirley Reilly is working with the local to insure this is done properly. She is in process of contacting AFGE National to verify that the Agency is applying the rule for conversion and reassignment is being applied properly.

The following is an excerpt from the "Fall 2008 AFGE News for DoD Employees Brochure". If you haven't received these from National, please contact them and order copies for distribution to your bargaining unit employees:

10 Reasons NSPS is Bad for You

1. The pay distribution process is not transparent.
2. You are rated by managers who don't work with you.
3. Your payout is not based on your real performance as ratings are forced into a bell curve.
4. Your share of money is given to somebody else because NSPS is budget neutral.
5. The amount of money put into different pay pools is decided arbitrarily. Even if you are a top performer, you might get less money simply because your pay pool has less money than others.
6. Two employees with identical ratings may not get the same raise and bonus.
7. The secret rating process takes time and you end up with less time to improve your performance for next year's payout.
8. Managers can promote whomever they want to higher level of duties and authorize a pay raise of up to 5 percent without competition. You might not even know there's a new position, let alone compete for it.
9. Because of pay caps, you are not reaching the top of your pay band, so the extra pay potential is just an illusion.
10. Your retirement benefits will be smaller because part of your payout each year may be a bonus instead of a raise. Bonuses are not counted towards retirement.

The brochure goes further in depth on each of the points above. Be sure to get some of the brochures if you haven't already received them.

Last but not least. If and when the DCMA bargaining unit would convert to NSPS, our contract will remain in effect until it comes up for renewal. This was verified at the Las Vegas NSPS Training with Mark Roth and Charlie Bernhardt from AFGE National Office.