October 26, 2006

Three judges set to hear Defense personnel reform appeal

By Karen Rutzick
Source: GovExec.com

A panel of three new judges was picked Wednesday to decide what could be the final chapter in the legal battle between the government and federal employee unions over new labor relations rules in the Defense Department.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia randomly assigned Judges Brett Kavanaugh, David Tatel and Stephen Williams to hear arguments on Dec. 11 in the Pentagon's case. The panel's ruling could affect the Homeland Security Department's similar effort to overhaul labor relations.

Kavanaugh served in the White House as legal counsel and then staff secretary for President Bush from 2001 until Bush appointed him to his current position in May 2006. Williams is a Reagan appointee who became a senior judge in 2001. Tatel -- installed by Clinton in 1994 -- will be the lone Democratic appointee on the panel.

The three-judge panel that ruled harshly against the Homeland Security Department's similar labor system also was made up of one Democratic and two GOP appointees. It was anchored by senior judge and Carter appointee Harry Edwards, an expert in the field of public sector labor relations.

Meanwhile, Defense officials continue to move forward in implementing the National Security Personnel System for nonbargaining unit employees. On Thursday, the Pentagon released survey results from the first 11,000 employees who entered the NSPS in April.

The survey, completed a month after the first group entered NSPS, showed that employees in the system were more satisfied with opportunities for promotion, quality of co-workers and supervisors, leadership and compensation than their non-NSPS civilian counterparts. Respondents also were found to be almost twice as likely to think that communication between supervisors and employees and the hiring process will improve under NSPS.

The Pentagon would not provide any further details of the survey methodology -- including response rates -- or the findings.

Union representatives expressed doubts about the study. Matt Biggs, spokesman for the coalition of Defense unions that banded together to fight NSPS, said because the compensation is the same for these employees in the first year, there is no reason they should be dissatisfied.

Ron Ault, president of the Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO, called the survey "propaganda." He said most of those in the first group are human resources and management employees who already were working under demonstration projects similar to NSPS.

The online survey, called the Status of Forces Survey-Civilian, will be conducted every six months by the Defense Manpower Data Center. The next survey is scheduled for November, after the first performance reviews are completed under NSPS.

 

October 26,2006

Revival of Social Security Privatization Proposal Threatens Working Families, Says AFGE National Social Security Council

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Social Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) today warned that the Bush administration is reviving its highly unpopular plan to dismantle the current Social Security system in favor of establishing private retirement accounts.

"The administration's plan failed in 2005 because people saw through the smoke and mirrors," said Council President Witold Skwierczynski. "The president's plan called for significant cuts in benefits for seniors and our children. Once people realized this, they rejected the administration's proposal out of hand. Apparently the president doesn't believe in listening to his constituents."

Media reports from the Washington Post and other distinguished publications have recently reported that Social Security reform remains one of the "big items" the president wants to tackle next year. In his first speech after taking office in August of this year, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Wall Street insider, said he was under orders from Bush to pursue Social Security reform.

AFGE National President John Gage said, "Instead of developing new ideas to strengthen the system, the president is merely repeating what he tried to do last year. This is not something we want to repeat. We can come up with a plan that doesn't slash benefits and risk the retirements of hard-working Americans."

The Council maintains that the administration's plan would destroy the retirement dreams of hundreds of millions of Americans at the expense of younger workers. The plan that the Bush administration favors would cut guaranteed benefits for someone born in 1960 by 15 percent, cut guaranteed benefits for someone born in 1970 by 25 percent and cut guaranteed benefits for those born in the 1980s and 1990s by 40 to 50 percent. Furthermore, the plan to replace Social Security with private accounts would leave millions of retirees in poverty and younger Americans with at least $4.9 trillion debt.

Skwierczynski also points out that the president fails to mention how he'll pay to implement a new Social Security system.

"Paying for the administration's plan would involve massive tax increases; drastic benefit cuts; an increase in the retirement age, which is effectively a benefit cut; or some combination of these things. The president's plan would cause hundreds of millions of Americans to lose the only retirement and disability income security they have. Reviving this ill-conceived plan is like producing a horrible sequel to a bad movie."

The National Social Security Council, officially known as the National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals (Council 220), represents about 30,000 employees of the Social Security Administration who work in field offices and national calling centers.

The Defense Department may seek legislation to make it easier to deploy civilians overseas, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

The department wants to review laws that make it difficult to reclassify job descriptions of employees who may be useful abroad, David Chu, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness, said at a conference sponsored by the Government Electronics and Technology Association in Falls Church, Va.

The potential changes would, for example, make it easier to deploy a stenographer whose ability to speak Arabic would make him or her more valuable overseas, Chu said. All civilian deployments would remain voluntary, he said.

Defense is also working to identify military jobs that could be filled by Pentagon civilians or contractors. Twenty thousand jobs have been converted so far, and the department hopes to double that number by 2008, Chu said.

Those measures are among steps the Pentagon is considering to offset the rapid increase in the cost of paying military personnel, Chu said.

Driven largely by increases in health and housing costs, personnel spending has risen steadily as a proportion of Defense budgets since the early ’90s, he said. From 2000 to 2004, annual compensation for active-duty personnel rose from $123 billion to $158 billion, he noted.

As a result, the Pentagon is considering a series of recommendations made last February by an Advisory Committee on Military Compensation.

“We are rethinking what the military compensation should look like, indeed what the military career should look like,” Chu said.

Proposals include giving military members more compensation during their careers rather than at retirement and substituting cash for in-kind benefits, like housing, Chu said. Defense is also considering ways to cut back on barracks and allow more personnel to find private housing, he added.

Studies show most employees prefer immediate cash payment to other forms of compensation, but change is difficult due to the political support for in-kind payments, Chu said.

Spending on military compensation in the current budget is $30 billion higher than the executive branch recommended, continuing a 12-year trend of Congress allocating more than the president requested, he noted.

“Reversing that trend . . . is one of our strategic objectives in the months and years ahead,” he said.

 

October 3, 2006

Pentagon official optimistic about overturning labor ruling

By Karen Rutzick
Source: GovExec.com
 
The Pentagon's top personnel official said Tuesday that his department's battle to secure new collective bargaining rules is far from over, despite a final court ruling overturning the Homeland Security Department's parallel system.

David Chu, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, said he is hopeful an appellate court will rule in favor of the National Security Personnel System's labor rules. Recently, DHS lost its last avenue for appealing rulings against its planned labor relations reforms: The solicitor general's office let pass a deadline for filing a challenge at the Supreme Court.

"You might ask, well, if they lost, can we win?" Chu said. "The answer is, potentially yes. We have a different statute than Homeland Security does; many believe a stronger statute, [and] one that is more directed in terms of the outcome we are pursuing."

Chu, who made his remarks at a breakfast sponsored by Government Executive, also said the Pentagon won't stop even if it loses at the appellate court level.

"There is always the Supreme Court option," Chu said. "But there are a series of options you could consider, including, yes, going back to Congress and saying 'OK, now what do we do?'"

The department recently filed a 77-page opening brief in its appeal. This was followed by a 61-page union rebuttal. In contention is management's ability to override collective bargaining agreements for national security purposes, a decreased scope of bargaining and a new internal review board to decide labor-management disputes. The lower court judge threw out all of those provisions; the Pentagon wants them back.

"What's at stake here is, 'What does collective bargaining mean in the federal government?' " Chu said. "What the statute invited us to do, at least as we interpret it, is to give the secretary the last word in terms of collective bargaining processes. The unions obviously are opposed to that system. We think it's essential for national security."

A byproduct of the labor relations case is that bargaining unit employees cannot enter into the human resources portion of the personnel system, which includes broad paybands and performance-based pay raises.

"We'd like the courts to allow us to proceed to place the so-called bargaining unit employees under the system as well," Chu said. "That's really what's at issue in the courts."

By January, the Pentagon will have almost 80,000 nonbargaining unit employees working under these systems -- more, as Chu pointed out, than most civilian agencies. But without new labor rules, the department would have to negotiate with hundreds of local bargaining units to get the system in place for the rest, which would create a patchwork of rules.

"There is no way we think, as a practical matter, to have a unified personnel system -- which is the objective here -- if you have to bargain with 1,500 locals," Chu said.

The undersecretary used the case of required drug testing for Defense employees with security clearances as an example.
"You would think drug testing for security clearances would be a no-brainer," Chu said. "That is not true. We still have bargaining units where that has not been accepted."

 

October 2, 2006

BILL WOULD EXTEND FEDERAL BENEFITS TO SAME SEX PARTNERS
Source: fednews-online

Same sex partners of federal employees could receive federal benefits, if a bipartisan bill introduced last week becomes law.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., have crafted the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act, which would extend to federal benefits to a federal employee's same-sex domestic partner "unrelated by blood and living together in a committed intimate relationship." The bill would also subject same-sex partners to anti-nepotism rules and financial disclosure requirements.

"Federal workers should be able to extend their benefits to loved ones. It's a matter of fairness and I think the government should be leading the way, rather than following. I believe we need to rid the workplace of discrimination, not just in hiring decisions, but also in the rights and privileges afforded employees," said Smith.

Based on the experience of private companies and state and local governments, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that offering benefits for same-sex domestic partners of federal employees would increase the cost of those programs by less than one half of one percent.

"This bill is very affordable, but more importantly, it is the right thing to do. Many leading employers, including my home state of Connecticut, provide benefits to domestic partners. It's time for the federal government to catch up as extending benefits to domestic partners is fair and will help federal agencies compete for the most qualified personnel," said Lieberman.

According a press release from the two senators, more than 8000 private-sector companies make benefits available to employees' domestic partners, as do several hundred state and local governments and colleges and universities.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., introduced a similar bill in the House of Representatives in July 2005. Although that bill had 81 cosponsors, it never left committee.

 

October 2, 2006

Congress withholds millions from DHS personnel system

By Karen Rutzick
Source: GovExec.com

Lawmakers last week cut millions of dollars in requested funding for the Homeland Security Department's new personnel system.

After House-Senate negotiations, the two bodies settled on $25 million for the system in fiscal 2007. That figure, which was included in the DHS appropriations bill conference report completed Thursday and approved late Friday by the House and Senate, is less than the $71.5 million requested in the president's budget and the $29.7 million Congress gave the system last year.

DHS' personnel system, authorized by Congress in 2002 when it formed the department, will feature a market and performance-based pay approach to replace the decades-old General Schedule under which most civil servants work.

According to DHS budget documents, the $41.8 million extra for fiscal 2007, which started Oct. 1, would have been used in part to create 29 positions. This included six spots on the Homeland Security Labor Relations Board, which would take the place of the Federal Labor Relations Authority in adjudicating labor-management disputes and is highly contested by federal unions. DHS said the extra money also would go toward centralizing human resources functions and hiring, placement and training initiatives.

The entire personnel system has been delayed by a court case initiated by unions in which a panel of judges said the proposed labor relations portion of the system was illegal because it did not provide for adequate collective bargaining rights. Most recently, DHS lost its last avenue for appeal when the solicitor general declined to bring the department's case to the Supreme Court. Without labor reforms, DHS has been unable to bring its unionized employees into the human resources system.

Right now, about 4,000 nonbargaining unit employees are working under the new performance management system. This month, the department plans to bring about 6,700 more managers and supervisors in the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and the Customs and Border Protection bureau into the program.

Eventually, 110,000 employees are scheduled to work under the personnel system. DHS originally had planned for 48,000 employees to enter it by early 2007.

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, one of the unions that sued DHS, called the funding cut "a major victory, both for NTEU and the dedicated men and women of DHS." Federal employee unions have fought the system because they say it will encourage cronyism and salary cuts in the long term.

In budget request documents, DHS said the $41.8 million would go to the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer "to continue implementation of the human resources system initiative...[that] rewards employees for their contributions to the mission of the department, not simply for longevity."

Department officials did not respond to a request for comment. The cuts came the same week lawmakers blocked funding for the Defense Department's similar labor system.
In the NSPS language, lawmakers said no money could be spent on changes to labor-management relations, adverse actions or appeals rules in governmentwide law. Congress in 2003 gave the Pentagon legal authority to change its personnel system, but a court also ruled those labor relations changes illegal in February. That case is under appeal.