July 31, 2006
AFGE APPLAUDS BILL TO ESTABLISH TAX EQUITY FOR FEDERAL CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES SERVING IN COMBAT ZONES
WASHINGTON-The American Federation of Government Employees today
applauded the introduction of a bill to establish tax equity for federal
employees deployed in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Recently Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Tom Davis (R-VA), and Joe Schwarz
(R-MI) introduced the Federal Employee Combat Zone Tax Credit Act (H.R. 5920) to extend a tax credit to federal civilian employees that is currently provided to military personnel.
"H.R. 5920 recognizes the essential contributions federal civilian
employees are making to our nation's interests by serving in combat
zones," said AFGE national president John Gage. "This legislation
amounts to fairness for those patriotic federal civilian employees who
are risking their lives by serving our nation in dangerous locations around the globe."
AFGE has argued that the disparate income tax treatment of federal civilian employees deployed in these combat zones - many of whom are serving side-by-side with military personnel - is unfair and
inequitable. Providing the same income tax credit to federal civilian employees and military personnel alike would rectify this inequity.
July 20, 2006
Senate panel votes to give civilians higher raise than military
Source: Govexec.com
By Karen Rutzick and Jenny Mandel
In a break with tradition, the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a higher 2007 pay raise for civilian federal employees than for military service members.
On the same day committee members voted for a 2.7 percent civilian pay hike as part of the fiscal 2007 Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill, they backed a 2.2 percent pay raise for members of the military as part of the Defense spending bill.
The 2.7 percent figure for civilians matches a mid-June vote by the full House. The 2.2 percent military raise also matches a House floor vote on the Defense appropriations bill, although that vote went against the House's earlier position to provide a 2.7 percent military raise as part of separate legislation - the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill.
For years, federal employee advocates have fought for the principle of pay parity between the two groups after the Bush administration has proposed larger raises for the military, but this year the concept has been turned on its head.
"The appropriate pay raise for both civilian and military employees is 2.7 percent," National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley said. "NTEU will support all efforts to provide a 2.7 percent pay raise to both civilian and military personnel."
Kelley added she expects Congress to grant a 2.7 percent increase to the military at the end of the process, which it could do on the Senate floor and then in conference negotiations.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said, "The difference will be negotiated as the bills move to the Senate floor."
President Bush proposed a 2.2 percent raise in his fiscal 2007 budget for both groups, marking the first time he did not suggest a higher raise for military service members than for civilian government employees. But members of Congress said soldiers deserve a higher raise, especially in a time of war; soon the House passed the 2.7 percent raise as part of the Defense authorization bill.
That prompted a pay parity movement from pro-federal worker lawmakers.
In a June statement of administration policy, the White House said it "strongly opposes" a 2.7 percent increase for federal employees, arguing it would cost an additional $600 million on top of the Bush proposal and that "any recruitment or retention challenges facing the federal government are limited to a few areas and occupations and are not addressed by arbitrary across-the board increases."
As part of the Transportation-Treasury measure, the Senate Appropriations Committee also retained competitive sourcing provisions from last year's bill that are in line with those governing the Defense Department.
The provisions would prevent the direct conversion of functions involving more than 10 federal employees to contractor performance, and would require that contractors show savings of at least 10 percent over the in-house team or $10 million, whichever is less, before work is awarded to the private sector.
Mikulski introduced that language in conference last year, and competitive sourcing foes were glad to see it included earlier in this year's bill.
American Federation of Government Employees lobbyist John Threlkeld said his organization "is particularly pleased that the committee's retention of the competition requirement will prevent agencies that are carrying out OMB's controversial lines of business initiatives from perpetrating direct conversions, giving away work performed by federal employees without public-private competition. The competition requirement ensures that agencies can get the quality they need, but at the lowest price to taxpayers."
"This language helps to level the playing field for federal employees and continues my fight to protect them against unfair contracting out policies," Mikulski said.
Also included in the Transportation-Treasury bill was funding for an Office of Personnel Management initiative to automate the federal employee retirement system, which the House rejected.
OPM Director Linda Springer urged the House to support the Senate's decision as the appropriations process moves forward "so that current and future federal employees will enjoy a smooth transition from their jobs to their golden years."
This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0706/072006r2.htm
2006 by National Journal Group Inc
July 19, 2006
Second phase of civilian personnel system roll-in begins
by Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON - The Defense Department announced plans to transfer more than 66,000 additional DoD civilian employees into the new National Security Personnel System beginning in October.
The plan, delivered to Congress earlier this week, ushers in the second phase in implementing the new pay-for-performance personnel system and affects organizations throughout DoD.
The first 11,000 DoD civilian employees were converted to the new system under "Spiral 1.1" of the phase-in on April 30. Defense officials are taking cues from this group to help smooth the way for the "Spiral 1.2" transition.
Mary Lacey, NSPS program executive officer, recently met with senior leaders from the Spiral 1.1 transition to identify what worked well and what improvements are needed. "We are already assessing implementation for the first group of employees," she said.
The transition for the first group ran smoothly. Officials reported a 99.9 percent accuracy rate in completing affected employees' personnel actions and no glitches in processing their pay through the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. "We are pleased with what we are seeing thus far, at least with the technical aspects of the conversion," Lacey said.
The Spiral 1.2 roll-in will take place over a four-month period, through January 2007, and will include civilian employees from organizations through DoD, including some overseas.
Affected components will have the discretion to convert their workforce any time between October 2006 and January 2007 to ensure enough time to train their employees, according to Mary Lacey, NSPS program executive officer. "Training is critical to the successful transition to NSPS," Lacey said. "We want to give organizations sufficient time to train employees, do it right and implement when they are ready."
Ultimately, the system will apply to more than 650,000 DoD civilian employees.
Employees being converted to the new system will receive new performance plans that are clearly linked to their organization's mission and strategic goals. They also will be converted to pay bands that replace the grade ratings under the General Schedule.
Officials emphasized that no employee will lose pay during the conversion to NSPS. Most will receive an initial pay bump to account for time already earned toward their next within-grade increase. A conversion tool in the NSPS 101 Course, posted on the NSPS Web site, helps employees estimate of the value of their within-grade-increase, as well as their career group and pay band under the new system.
The performance appraisal cycle for Spiral 1.2 employees will begin on the actual day of their conversion to NSPS and continue through Sept. 30, 2007. These employees will receive their first performance pay increased in January 2008.
The ongoing NSPS conversion includes only the human resources parts of the system, which include job classification, compensation, performance management, staffing and workforce-shaping elements. It does not include elements of the new system involving labor relations, collective bargaining, independent third-party review, adverse actions and the National Security Labor Relations Board.
DoD and the Office of Personnel Management have appealed a late February court decision blocking implementation of these provisions. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that they would fail to protect civilian employees' ability to bargain collectively. The decision was based on a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees and 12 other labor unions.
Defense officials hope for a decision on the appeal by the year's end as they continue implementing parts of the new personnel system not caught up in litigation.
NSPS is one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's key initiatives designed to transform DoD operations to better meet 21st-century needs. It is replacing what officials call an outdated, 50-year-old civilian personnel management system that rewards employees for length of service rather than performance. The new program, in development since 2003, replaces the current general-schedule personnel system with broad pay bands.
"NSPS is critical to the department's transformation to a results-oriented, mission-focused culture," said Michael Dominguez, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "The performance-based system will create an environment where our employees will be focused on outcomes that support our national security mission, and they will be rewarded for the results."
July 18, 2006
Bill would streamline employee grievance process
By MOLLIE ZIEGLER
A federal employee looking to air a workplace grievance has no shortage of options for where to take his case.
Depending on the nature of the grievance, it could be the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or perhaps the Merit Systems Protection Board. It could be the Office of Special Counsel, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the Office of Personnel Management or even the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
And resolving such grievances — whether they concern alleged discrimination, an unfair labor practice, supervisor retaliation or something else — is usually an overly complex process that can take a year or more.
That’s why Rep. John Porter, R-Nev., is drafting a bill that would take a first step toward overhauling the way agencies handle employee complaints.
Porter’s bill would create a yearlong commission to identify ways to streamline and simplify the employee appeals process.
“The current system . . . is complex, often confusing, and may have outlived its original purpose,” Porter said at a July 11 hearing of the House Government Reform subcommittee on the federal workforce and agency organization. “We can preserve the rights of federal employees and at the same time increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal employee appeals process.”
Last year the Senior Executives Association called on lawmakers to consolidate the complaint, appeals and grievance processes into a single system to be administered by a federal appeals court. Critics and supporters both expressed a desire that the proposal be studied further before legislative action. Porter’s draft legislation is the first specific outline to be proposed.
Federal managers are an easy and convenient target under the current appeals system, said Bill Bransford, SEA general counsel.
The equal employment opportunity process is used by employees to raise complaints of job dissatisfaction when they lack evidence of discrimination, he said. Only 1.5 percent of the total cases filed resulted in findings of discrimination last year, according to a new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report.
“One reason the EEO process is so clogged is that a very high percentage of those 23,153 complaints are fully investigated, even though it is apparent to any informed observer that the complaint lacks merit,” Bransford said.
He said that having one independent agency with a strong, efficient and professional staff perform investigations would free agencies from the conflict of investigating their own complaints and permit greater focus and resources on the complaints that have merit. SEA, which proposes a new Federal Employee Appeals Court to replace all existing appeals systems, supports Porter’s proposal.
Identifying the reasons the process takes so long and is often considered unfair, as Porter proposes, is a “crucial first step” for redressing employee wrongs, said Neil McPhie, chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board. Under Porter’s proposal, McPhie would chair the commission.
But Bill Tobey, deputy solicitor of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, said overlapping jurisdictions has not been a significant problem. While he admits that the federal appeals process is in need of some fixes, he said an independent entity such as the congressionally chartered National Academy of Public Administration could do a better job of getting to the source of the problems and coming up with ways to fix them.
An outside group would remove real or perceived conflicts of interest, said EEOC chairwoman Cari Dominguez. She suggested the Council for Excellence in Government and Partnership for Public Service might also fit the bill.
“A well-regulated system to handle complaints and appeals must exist to protect the integrity of government because it ensures that employees receive due process and it ultimately preserves the principles of the merit system,” said Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who said the potential for a productive commission report and legislation is there.
Bloch said his agency’s investigation of unnecessarily repeated actions led to improved processing times for complaints in its screening unit and doubled the number of cases that go for further investigation.
While Bloch supports Porter’s reform effort, “it would be a mistake to simply jump to the conclusion that a draconian solution is in order: Eliminate all perceived complexity by removing alternate avenues for review of personnel actions.”
Office of Personnel Management associate director Nancy Kichak said that the year allotted for the commission to perform its work would be insufficient under Porter’s proposal.
Union officials said the proposed commission is too large, would have too broad a mandate, would take too long to deliberate unnecessary recommendations and would lack credibility because its makeup is too heavily political. The commission would be comprised of two manager representatives, two union representatives and the agencies facing review.
John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that legislation should be narrowly tailored to focus on improvements at EEOC.
July 13, 2006
DOD expands second phase of NSPS
Source: FCW.com
BY Wade-Hahn Chan
The Defense Department’s second phase of its pay-for-performance system will involve more employees than DOD originally planned to include.
The agency announced yesterday that Spiral 1.2, the second phase of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), will go into effect in October and cover more than 66,500 employees, up from the original number of 47,000.
“NSPS is critical to the department's transformation to a results-oriented, mission-focused culture,” said Michael Dominguez, principal deputy assistant secretary for personnel and readiness at DOD. “The performance-based system will create an environment where our employees will be focused on outcomes that support our national security mission, and they will be rewarded for the results.”
NSPS will eventually affect 650,000 DOD employees. Spiral 1.1 was phased in April 30 to 11,000 workers. NSPS representatives have been satisfied with Spiral 1.1 implementation so far.
“We are pleased with what we are seeing thus far, at least with the technical aspects of the conversion,” said Mary Lacey, NSPS’ program executive officer.
However, the system has suffered setbacks in court and in Congress because of problems with ensuring union rights such as collective bargaining. Most recently, the House passed an amendment that would defund portions of NSPS. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) said the system threatens basic worker rights and “jeopardizes our ability to recruit and maintain qualified, skilled workers to protect our national security.”
The accelerated implementation of Spiral 1.2 has union representatives puzzled.
“It seems absurd, quite frankly,” said Ward Morrow, assistant general counsel at the American Federation of Government Employees. “To try to do it to [employees] who aren’t covered by the lawsuit knowing that they’re going to have to go back and do it over again seems like a waste of money.”
July 13, 2006
Lawyers, Unions, Pay and Federal Employees:
DoD Moving Forward Despite Obstacles
The National Security Personnel System (NSPS) has been getting considerable press recently--most of it proclaiming the program is going down in flames because of successful legal challenges brought into federal court by federal employee unions.
But with the hype surrounding the losses in court, some readers may have missed a more important feature of the program in the Department of Defense: pay-for-performance is still moving forward in the agency. And, when the Department of Defense starts implementing a new program, it is usually one that will impact a large number of federal employees.
Pay-for-performance will be a big deal for a large number of federal employees. While it is just starting, the first 11,000 DoD employees were brought into the new pay system in April. The first group has been given a title that sounds like it came from a science fiction movie: "Spiral 1.1."
The agency apparently likes the name as "Spiral 1.2" is now moving forward. Defense is moving another 66,000 employees into the new pay system starting in October. Spiral 1.2 affects a variety of organizations throughout the Department of Defense. (For a listing of the organizations impacted,
download this Spiral 1.2 file.) Ultimately, the system will apply to more than 650,000 DoD civilian employees if the agency is able to move forward as it would like to do. Spiral 1.2 will be implemented over a four-month period, through January 2007.
"NSPS is critical to the department's transformation to a results-oriented, mission-focused culture," according to Michael Dominguez, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. He states in an agency press release that "The performance-based system will create an environment where our employees will be focused on outcomes that support our national security mission, and they will be rewarded for the results."
But what about the losses in court everyone has been reading about? Didn't some judge rule that the new system was illegal or unfair or contrary to law in some way?
Yes, that did happen. And it has happened for DoD and for the Department of Homeland Security. (See
Court Strikes Down Labor Relations Portion of New DHS System.) But look beyond the hoopla and you will find out that the portion of NSPS that was shot down in court was not the pay-for-performance system. Federal employee unions were successful in creating big problems for the labor relations portion of the system. Pay-for-performance will ultimately be impacted by the ability of employees to file appeals or the ability of unions to negotiate for employees that are represented.
As we noted previously, the labor relations setbacks in court are significant. It is conceivable that the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security may wind up bargaining on pay for employees in bargaining units under a new pay system. (See
Is Pay Bargaining Around the Corner in DHS and DoD?) The agency anticipates another ruling on its appeal of an initial court decision before the end of the year.
Under the labor relations system as proposed for DoD, the ability of unions to bargain and the ability of employees to appeal decisions would be much more restricted than under the provisions of the current labor relations law as it has been interpreted and applied since 1978. The proposed system more closely resembled the labor relations structure under Presidents Kennedy and Nixon in the 1960's (See
Labor Relations in Government: Back to the Future?)
NSPS, in its entirety, is one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's key initiatives. Agency officials wanted a system to enable DoD to be able to make and implement decisions quickly rather than working within the current labor and pay structures in place for the civil service. DoD officials refer to the current structure as an outdated, 50-year-old civilian personnel management system that rewards employees for length of service rather than performance.
The new pay system has been in development since 2003 and replaces the current general-schedule personnel system with broad pay bands.
At a minimum, without a new labor relations system in place, the agency will find itself spending considerable time and effort in litigating a wide variety of topics and then bargaining on the implemention of a new system. Under the current labor relations structure, negotiating and litigating the implementation of a new system could take a few years.
So far at least, the employees moving into the pay-for-performance system are not in bargaining units. In other words, they are not represented by a union. The labor relations portion of the system does not apply to these federal workers in any event.
DoD says that the transition for the first group went smoothly. DoD says there was an accuracy rate of 99.9 percent in completing affected employees' personnel actions and no glitches in processing their pay through the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. "We are pleased with what we are seeing thus far, at least with the technical aspects of the conversion," according to Mary Lacey, the NSPS program executive officer.
Lacey notes that the affected components will have the discretion to convert their workforce any time between October 2006 and January 2007. "Training is critical to the successful transition to NSPS," Lacey said. "We want to give organizations sufficient time to train employees, do it right and implement when they are ready."
Employees being converted to the new system will receive new performance plans that linked to their organization's mission and strategic goals. They also will be converted to pay bands that replace the grade ratings under the General Schedule.
No employee will lose any pay--at least during the conversion to NSPS. In fact, most employees will receive an an increase in pay because of the time already earned toward their next within-grade increase.
The performance appraisal cycle for Spiral 1.2 employees will begin on the actual day of their conversion to NSPS and continue through Sept. 30, 2007. These employees will receive their first performance pay increase in January 2008.
Those first 77,000 DoD employees are now moving into DoD's version of the 21st century pay system. The DoD employees in bargaining units may have to wait awhile.
July 5, 2006
IS 40 PERCENT OFFICIAL TIME ENOUGH FOR UNION PRESIDENTS?
Source: Fednews-online
The Federal Service Impasses Panel recently ruled that a union president can have 50 percent of his official time to perform his representational duties.
In Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran Health Administration, Health Revenue Center, Topeka, Kansas and Local 906, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, the VA filed a request for assistance with the FSIP to consider a negotiation impasse under the Federal Labor-Management Relations Statute between it and Local 906.
The Panel determined the parties should resolve the dispute through an informal teleconference with Panel Member Richard B. Ainsworth. The parties were informed that if a settlement was not reached that the Panel would be notified of the status of the dispute, including the parties' final offers and Member Ainsworth's recommendations, and the Panel would later resolve the dispute.
The parties were unable to settle. The VA believed the Local president's time allocated for union representation should remain at 40 percent. The VA stated it is open to make accommodations to the Union president if 40 percent is not sufficient, but only in limited situations.
The union believed the representation time should be increased to 50 percent because the size of the bargaining unit had more than doubled in the past year and is expected to continue to grow based on the VA's plans to hire and train more employees in the near future.
The Panel examined the evidence and ordered that the parties adopt the union's position, which allows the union president to work 50 percent official time on representational duties.
