Union Busting, Pentagon Style! - Bush's War on Gov't Workers, Part 1

Talk to any Human Resource professional in the Army and they will be the first to tell you that the Federal Government's shiny new National Security Personnel System (NSPS)just puts a new face on "The Good Ole' Boy" system from years past.

- It changes hiring/firing by giving management much more control...thus allowing nepotism and friendship-based hiring.

- It changes the system of raises and awards, erasing cost-of-living raises and making them "performance based." That sounds reasonable on the surface, but in reality the new system will allot a much smaller pot of money to each manager to be divvied up as he/she sees fit. Therefore, more folks better learn to play golf and find other ways to suck-up to the boss.

- It changes the ranking system, establishing what's known as "pay bands" for each position. The problem with pay bands is that they can be a wide range for the same job. Example: What's now a Information Technology Specialist can go from a GS-05,07, 09, 11, as it is a "ladder" position of increasing responsibility. However, under pay-bands, all of those grades would come under the same Job Description, making it completely legal to continue to pay the employee at a GS-05 level while giving them GS-11 duties...and it is conceivable that the employee could legally NEVER get a raise. (Unless one employs the "golf" or "sucking-up" tactics mentioned above.)

- Members of six federal workers unions walked out of NSPS talks in May of 2005 because of the roadblocks to collective bargaining and lack-of-redress given to workers under the new system. The Union of American Federal Government Employees (AFGE) took this problem to court and won. While this should have held up implementation of NSPS as a whole, Donald Rumsfeld was determined to push forward. He decided to implement all aspects of NSPS NOT covered in the court suit to the "non-bargaining unit" government employees. A "second wave" of employees are to be implemented this month. (By the way, Outsourcing and A-76 are changing many jobs to non-bargaining unit positions, but that will be the subject of another post.)

- In retaliation, the Unions successfully pressured Congress to defund NSPS in both the Pentagon's version and the DHS version.

While far from a complete victory, the willingness of Congress to support the court ruling by tossing another rock into the relentless NSPS machine could be looked upon as another indication of Bush's failing influence...at least as long as the courts uphold that decision.