Department of Defense
and the
National Security Personnel System

Summary of the Situation

If you are a federal civil service employee working for DoD and you have not heard about NSPS, you have really been sleeping.

The Details

As if the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) were not such an employee unfriendly employer and did not display enough of an anti-union attitude already, the Republican controlled White House, Congress and Senate passed a law that granted the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, sweeping powers  to completely re-write the law  addressing civil service employment (Title 5 United States Code).  With DCMA already in the mode of bullying and abusing its employees and their unions, DCMA is now chomping at the bit in anticipation of the changes to be brought about under DoDs new NSPS.

DoD started off their NSPS efforts by trying to completely nullify and invalidate the last 100 years of employee labor accomplishments.  DoD knows that congress intended for the civil service employees to maintain their unions, but DoD fully intends to take away every past practice, collective bargaining agreement, negotiability appeal decision, federal court case and Supreme Court Decision effecting DoD federal civilian employees and completely nullify them.  The civilian employees under DoD will loose all collective bargaining rights and almost all of their representational rights.  All DoD intends to do is tell the employees unions what DoD intends to do and when the time for "collaboration" with the union has expired, DoD will simply implement the changes.  Unions in the future will simply exist with no rights, no powers and only a DoD controlled appeals process.  DoD even intends to take over the decision making authority for determining which employees are even allowed to have a union.

As part of this new DoD NSPS, DoD will be implementing Pay Banding coupled with a Pay-for-Performance System.  If DCMA's unfair and unequal administration of the Incentive Awards Program is any indication of how this new pay system will work, the American Taxpayers are in for a ride.  Pay-for-Performance is a pipe dream that will be used by DCMA to reward those who are the bosses favorites, the brown nose and the yes man.  Pay-for-Performance will be used by supervisors to whip employees into line and teach them that they must dedicate 100% of their time and energy toward pleasing the boss.  The good-ole-boy system is alive and well within DCMA and Pay-for-Performance will only serve to promote and strengthen its existence.

I predict that DCMA employees will again see DCMA managers and supervisors dipping from the same pot of wage money as the employees they supervise, just like DCMA has done with the Incentive Awards Budget.  I predict that DCMA management will continue to utilize totally subjective and non-measurable job performance indicators so they can dole out the higher wages and rewards to their favorites, the brown nose and the yes men.  Those who have done the bosses bidding and are rewarded for it just like they are under the DCMA Incentive Awards Program.  With DCMA managers and supervisors gaining the right and ability to hire, fire, promote, set the pay and reward employees at will, DCMA will be free to heap even more abuse and punishment upon its workers.  Can you imagine a whole agency plum full of brown nose employees and snitches?

NSPS is not really intended as a tool in the War on Terrorism, NSPS is actually intended as a DoD War on federal civil service employees and their unions.  With the employees unions being relegated to a "collaboration" role, NSPS will be used as a tool to whip federal civil service employees into line with DCMA managements line of thinking and doing, no matter what the costs. Creativity, risk taking and self motivation will be employee liabilities, not assets.  DoD will treat every civilian employee as if they have just joined the active duty military and as if they will be ordering them around like a bunch of buck privates.  Employees will be lucky if they have any control over their lives, even outside of duty hours.  There will be no stability to DoD civilian employment because the employee will not be able to count on staying in the same job or the same place or on being able to count on their pay remaining at the same or going up to meet inflation from year to year.  Pay increases and promotions will simply be at the whim of the supervisor they just happen to work for.  Before NSPS is even implemented DCMA is already planning for the establishment of civil service positions that the agency can order overseas and into war zones at the wink of an eye for six months at a time.  While deployed, DCMA will have total control over the employees every waking moment. When was the last time you were restricted to base, slept in a tent or ate military rations?

Federal employee or not, everyone needs to be writing their Congressman and Senator to complain about NSPS.  Because of NSPS negative impact, it will actually diminish DoD's ability to accomplish its national defense mission.  As a taxpayer you loose under NSPS and as an employee of DoD you will loose twice, once as a taxpayer and again as an employee.

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