国土安全保障省・国防省の給与制度関係
Compromise On Pentagon Pay System, Union Rights
By Stephen Barr
Monday, December 10, 2007; Page D01
It's a compromise aimed at ending four years of controversy.
House-Senate negotiators unveiled legislation Friday that would restore collective bargaining rights to unions at the Defense Department, permit the Pentagon to go forward with new pay rules and perhaps ease the angst of many Defense employees.
The legislation would modify significant parts of the National Security Personnel System, a Bush administration effort that sought to sharply curb union rights at Defense and to more rigorously link annual pay raises of civilian employees to job-performance ratings.
The measure would guarantee that NSPS employees receive 60 percent of the annual pay raise that most other government workers get. The remaining 40 percent would be used for performance-related salary increases, allocated according to an employee's job rating.
The proposal may disrupt the Pentagon's plans for NSPS raises in January.
Under current rules, the defense secretary has had the discretion to set raises, and the Pentagon has announced plans to phase out across-the-board increases to employees covered by the new system.
For 2008, NSPS employees were scheduled to receive 50 percent of the government-wide raise, with the rest of their salary increase linked to job ratings. In subsequent years, all raises would be determined by job performance.
That announcement had created some anxiety for Defense employees, who, like many other federal employees, see the annual raise provided by Congress as a cost-of-living adjustment and worried that their pay might not keep pace with workers elsewhere in the government.
According to the legislation, performance payments would be paid as raises, not bonuses. The distinction is important to some employees, because bonuses do not count toward pension credits. NSPS employees also would be eligible for locality pay.
The legislation is part of the fiscal 2008 defense bill that authorizes weapons programs for the military and would provide the armed forces with a 3.5 percent pay raise next year. The House and Senate will probably vote on the bill this week and send it on to the president.
Administration officials declined to comment on the proposed NSPS modifications, saying they were studying the measure. Congressional aides said the NSPS changes have bipartisan support and predicted acceptance by the White House.
The House and Senate Armed Services committees write the authorization bill and typically do not spend much time on civil service issues. But that was not the case this year.
At various times, several lawmakers and their aides have played key roles in shaping the compromise on the NSPS, union spokesmen said. They included Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Sens. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Susan Collins (R-Maine); and Reps. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.), Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), and Tom Allen (D-Maine).
As originally envisioned, the NSPS would have covered about 700,000 Defense employees and represented one of the biggest changes in federal pay and workplace rules since the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.
But the Bush administration initiative quickly angered labor leaders, who formed a coalition of 36 Defense unions to stop the new system, especially rules that they said would gut union rights and undermine employee rights to challenge major disciplinary actions, such as suspensions and firings.
The unions filed a lawsuit challenging the new workplace rules for Defense and cranked up a lobbying campaign to bring their concerns before Congress. After Democrats took control of Congress, the unions stepped up efforts to win a legislative repeal of the NSPS.
The legislation would place labor relations and employee appeals back under regular civil service law. Unions would be able to negotiate binding contracts on the same scope of issues as elsewhere in government. It would permit Defense employees to appeal major disciplinary actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that rules in disputes between employees and agencies.
The legislation would permit the unions and the Pentagon to agree to "national level bargaining," where department-wide policies could be settled in talks that might be attended by as many as 46 unions. It also permits unions to bargain over the implementation of new rules at the local level.
The House-Senate negotiators also reduced the number of employees eligible for the NSPS by excluding blue-collar workers and exempting employees at Defense laboratories through 2011. Both groups already work under special pay systems.
Labor leaders who have objected to the NSPS thanked lawmakers for restoring union rights.
John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, called the legislation "an acceptable compromise." Gregory J. Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said "the workers at DoD can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel." Ron Ault, president of the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, said his lawyers were studying the compromise but that it appeared to be "an early Christmas present from this Congress."
The Pentagon, however, did not lose its key priority -- the creation of a performance-based pay system and the ability to continue phasing in the pay system.
The NSPS currently covers about 130,000 nonunion Defense employees, and another 55,000 are lined up to enter the system in the spring. If the department chooses, it remains able to start talks with labor leaders to bring unionized workers into the system.
The measure would not permit unions to bargain over pay. It would deny pay raises to Defense employees with a job rating of "unacceptable," one of the Pentagon's goals.
"We want them to do collective bargaining, but we want to give the department a fair chance to show that pay for performance can work," one congressional aide said. "The ball is in their court."
John Gage, shown in a 2005 file photo, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, called the legislation "an acceptable compromise." (By Lauren Victoria Burke For The Washington Post)
Pay Raises, Pensions, Contracting Rules and the Kitchen Sink
By Stephen Barr
Tuesday, December 18, 2007; Page D04
Federal employees have a sizeable stake in this week's debate over the year-end, catch-all spending bill before the Congress -- starting with their pay.
Most civil service employees would receive an average raise of 3.5 percent next year, under the fiscal 2008 consolidated appropriations bill that was unveiled yesterday. That is slightly more than the 3 percent average that President Bush authorized in a Nov. 28 directive.
The catch-all bill is necessary because Congress and the White House did not reach agreement on almost any of the annual spending bills that fund the government -- the defense bill being the exception.
The catch-all bill would also permit Customs and Border Protection officers to receive law enforcement retirement benefits, which are more generous than regular civil service pensions. The CBP officers will be able to convert to the law enforcement system by July.
In the contentious area of contracting, the bill would strengthen the hand of employees to keep their jobs when agencies want to put their work up for bid in the private sector. One controversial program, outsourcing the collection of overdue taxes, would continue, however.
Agency officials and lobbyists spent much of yesterday sorting through the bill, which increases funding for some programs and takes it away from others. For example, the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services and related agencies would be directed to take an across-the-board cut of about 1.7 percent. But funding for the Social Security Administration would increase so that the agency could work through a growing backlog of disability claims.
Some personnel policy disputes also would be resolved by the catch-all bill.
It provides no money for a new human resources and pay system, originally called MaxHR, at the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the bill would provide $10 million to address morale and other issues that were identified in a 2006 employee attitude survey. The department ranked near the bottom in the employee ratings.
In addition to providing the government-wide pay raise, the bill would ensure that unionized employees at the Defense Department receive the recommended 3.5 percent raise.
The Pentagon is rolling out a pay-for-performance system for Defense employees that has been opposed by key unions in the department. While the new system does not apply to unionized workers at Defense, the bill would guarantee that regular pay raises continue in 2008.
Meanwhile, a separate bill, approved by the House and Senate, would address future pay raises for Defense civilians. It guarantees that employees performing their jobs in an acceptable manner would receive 60 percent of the annual raise provided most other government workers, with the remaining 40 percent used for performance-based salary increases.
Congressional Democrats and Bush have differed over pay issues for much of this year. Although Bush has raised objections, Democrats hope that he and conservative Senate Republicans will accept their pay plans as part of the many compromises in the year-end legislation. The House and Senate plan to wrap up the legislation this week.
Starting in July, CBP officers would be eligible to retire with 20 years of service at age 50 or after 25 years of service at any age. In addition, the officers would be able to qualify for the more generous law enforcement pension based on every year worked after July 1. Many current officers will be eligible for a hybrid pension, based on their regular civil service retirement credits and their law enforcement credits.
On the issue of outsourcing federal work, the bill would take some previous restrictions that have had to be renewed on an annual basis and make them permanent.
The bill, for example, would require contractors to show a savings of at least 10 percent or $10 million over the federal cost to win a competition. Federal employees also would get the right to ask the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, to review a contracting decision if the employees thought it was unfair or biased.
Homeland Security Revises Rule for Disciplinary Appeals
By Stephen Barr
Wednesday, October 10, 2007; Page D04
A key rule designed to streamline the handling of major disciplinary appeals by Department of Homeland Security employees is in place -- almost five years after President Bush set it in motion.
The rule, which was snagged in litigation at one point, came out of a collaboration involving the department, the Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board. The merit board issued the rule Friday, describing how it will handle employee appeals that come its way from Homeland Security.
That step by the merit board permits the Department of Homeland Security to begin rolling out its new procedures for disciplining employees. Administration officials have contended that the new rule is needed to speed up the disciplinary process, part of a broader effort at Homeland Security to reshape the workforce after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Department employees who are not covered by union contracts will be covered by the rule soon. Homeland Security will bargain with unions over the implementation of the rule for the 50,000 employees covered by bargaining agreements, said Marta Brito Perez, the department's chief personnel official.
A number of the changes are designed to streamline the process used by Homeland Security employees to appeal major disciplinary actions -- such as a job suspension, a demotion or a firing -- to the merit board, an independent, quasi-judicial agency that rules in disputes between employees and agencies.
For example, Homeland Security employees will have 20 days to appeal major disciplinary action, instead of the 30 days provided most other federal employees. The rule firms up a 90-day deadline for the board's administrative judges to issue an initial decision on Homeland Security cases
If there is no dispute over the basic facts in the case, one of the parties may seek a summary judgment, allowing the administrative judge to rule without conducting a full, adversarial hearing. In contrast, most other federal employees have a right to a hearing.
In crafting the new rule, Bush appointees also wanted to limit the power of the merit board.
The board sometimes scales back the punishment for misconduct when it concludes the penalty is unreasonable. The board can deem a penalty as too harsh if the agency has not taken into account other factors, such as a person's length of employment or a previously unblemished work record.
Bush appointees contended that such mitigation of punishment was inappropriate for Homeland Security employees given the vital nature of their work. Under the new rule, the board can modify the punishment imposed by the department only if "such penalty is so disproportionate to the basis for the action as to be wholly without justification."
Federal unions, led by the National Treasury Employees Union, objected to the new mitigation standard, contending it will make it almost impossible for employees to secure relief, even when a disproportionate penalty is imposed for a minor offense.
NTEU challenged the new rule in federal court, but an appeals court panel last year allowed the rule to go forward, saying that the union challenge was premature. Colleen M. Kelley, the union's president, said she will watch to see whether this part of the rule is administered fairly.
That and other changes being made through the new rule, Kelley said, "will make it more difficult for DHS employees to challenge actions taken against them."
Perez said the department has been consulting with unions and has modified some policies regarding job performance and misconduct as a result. Two parts of the new rule also will not be implemented, she said, until discussions have been held with unions.
One part would have created "mandatory removal offenses" that required the immediate firing of violators. The other part would have placed new hires on probation for up to two years, as opposed to the current one-year probation period. Employees on probation have limited rights, making it easier for an agency to end their employment.
A Slow Go at Homeland Security
By Stephen Barr
Friday, May 25, 2007; Page D04
It's no secret that the government's biggest reorganization in 50 years has been troubled.
The Department of Homeland Security, which came together in a 2003 merger of 22 agencies, has encountered budget woes, turnover in senior leaders, contracting scandals and widespread criticism of its dilatory response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
It's also no secret that another part of the reorganization -- changes in how Homeland Security employees would be paid, promoted and disciplined -- also has a long way to go.
That was underscored in a recently released report by the Office of Personnel Management, which, it should be noted, was the department's partner in designing the new pay and personnel rules.
"At the present time, the evidence suggests DHS is not keeping employees committed to the organization," the office's report said. Employee confidence in the department as a good place to work, with leaders that motivate them, has dropped, according to the report.
In rolling out a more rigorous system for rating employees on how well they meet their job expectations, the department "did not provide evidence performance ratings were reviewed by appropriate leadership to ensure accuracy and consistency in ratings," the report said.
Homeland Security officials envisioned that most of the department's 110,000 civil service employees would be covered by new workplace rules by 2005, but the report shows that progress has been much slower than predicted. As of April 12, OPM said, 9,770 employees were covered by the new rules and only 3,070 had received an annual job rating.
To be sure, the project was slowed by opposition from the National Treasury Employees Union and other unions. The unions filed a lawsuit to stop curbs on collective bargaining, a part of the department's original plan, and prevailed in federal court. The unions also stirred controversy in Congress, and the NTEU is lobbying in the House for a cut off of funding for the new personnel system, contending that other departmental initiatives are more critical.
Over time, Homeland Security officials reassessed and scaled back their timetable and plans. In February, department officials decided to try a new approach, noting that a pay-for-performance system depends on employees who accept change and managers who can rate the performance of employees in a credible manner.
The department tossed out the program's name, MaxHR, and drew up a replacement plan that focuses on how to improve hiring and better develop leaders in the department. It also calls for running a pilot program on the pay system to test concepts and practices.
In a letter accompanying the OPM report, Marta Brito Perez, the chief personnel official at Homeland Security, called the assessment incomplete. She said OPM "is not accurate" in asserting that the department "does not promote a high performance workforce." She also rejected the finding that the department has not shown progress in assuring fairness and consistency in how it rates the job performance of employees.
OPM recommended that Homeland Security set up an office to oversee implementation of the new personnel rules -- an approach used by the Pentagon for its new National Security Personnel System.
Establishing such an office would make "the program a corporate goal rather than an HR [human resources] initiative," the OPM report said. "This would provide higher visibility and help keep senior leaders engaged."
Homeland Security's Marta Brito Perez rejects findings in OPM report. (Dhs - Dhs)
A Symbolic Setback to Linking Pay With Performance
By Stephen Barr
Monday, February 26, 2007; D01
MaxHR is out.
Human Capital Operational Plan is in.
The name change at the Homeland Security Department reflects a new set of priorities aimed at improving how thousands of Border Patrol, customs and immigration officers are hired and how career leaders are chosen and trained.
But the name change from trendy branding to prosaic government jargon also can be taken as a symbol of how one of the Bush administration’s signature efforts to shake up the federal workforce lost momentum because of overly ambitious goals, adverse court rulings and budget cuts.
The shift to the new plan means that a key goal of the Bush White House to use about 110,000 Homeland Security employees as a model for a rigorous pay system with raises linked to job performance ratings will not be completed before the presidential election in 2008, leaving it to a new White House team to forge on or abandon that effort.
Marta Brito Perez, who became the department’s chief human capital officer five months ago, called the decision to adopt a new workforce management plan “the right thing to do.”
“It should be reassuring to the employees, employee representatives, the Hill and the public,” she added.
Instead of pushing forward on a department-wide performance-based pay system, Homeland Security will set up a pilot project in 2008 focused on the department’s employees who work in intelligence. The pilot will be coordinated with a pay initiative being developed by the director of national intelligence for the government’s primary intelligence agencies.
Because intelligence analysts are in high demand across government, the pilot project should help the department stay competitive in hiring and pay while also providing a test of Homeland Security’s new performance management system. That system calls for developing job goals for employees, tracking their accomplishments and using job ratings to steer larger pay raises to the best workers.
“There was a conscious decision that this organization needs to have a good performance management program in place before pay can be linked to it,” Perez said. “We have to get this right.”
If the pilot goes well, the department in 2009 could move to the next step: shifting employees off the 15-grade General Schedule, a decades-old pay system that the Bush administration faults as giving too many automatic pay raises to federal workers, and into “pay bands” where salaries are more closely tied to occupation and geographic location.
But changing pay rules at Homeland Security may prove difficult. Federal unions have won court rulings that block the department’s efforts to limit their bargaining rights, and the department will probably have to negotiate with unions over the design and implementation of a new pay system.
The unions and some employees are skeptical about revamping pay practices, in part because they believe giving managers greater discretion over raises will let them play favorites or use pay decisions to single out employees for punitive actions.
Under the new plan, known as HCOP, the department will focus on hiring and retaining a talented and diverse workforce, creating a “culture of performance,” creating high-quality training programs and improving leadership development programs.
Perez said the department is not jettisoning MaxHR, which kicked off in February 2004. “We are moving beyond Max in areas that are keys to our success,” she said.
Still, she acknowledged in an interview, “every time someone mentions Max, their eyes roll,” apparently because it has become tainted by union lawsuits or because it is no longer seen as living up to its catchy name.
“We’re not going to be using the term MaxHR anymore,” Perez said. “Folks around here don’t seem to like it. It is not reflective of the things we are doing.”
Homeland Security Pay Plan Goes Forward, but Unions Are Wary
By Stephen Barr
Wednesday, April 5, 2006; Page D04
The Department of Homeland Security is moving ahead with its plan to change how it evaluates and pays employees, even as it tries to fend off unions in court.
The pay changes and the court case are separate issues, but the union litigation has altered the department's timetable and injected some uncertainty into how far Homeland Security can go in changing some key workplace rules.
Gregg Prillaman , chief human capital officer at the department, said the litigation "has essentially compressed" the schedule for converting employees from the traditional civil service system, the decades-old General Schedule, to a performance-based system. "Instead of moving people onto it quicker, it is going to be slightly slower," he said.
The litigation is scheduled to resume tomorrow, when the unions, led by the National Treasury Employees Union, and the government make oral arguments before a federal appeals court.
The NTEU, contending that the new rules would gut collective bargaining in the department, won the first round last August. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ruled that the department's plan would put the unions on "quicksand" when trying to negotiate the terms of contracts, and she blocked new labor-management rules.
Although the unions have focused their legal efforts on stopping the department's new work rules, they also are wary of the new pay system, contending that the government has a poor track record in creating performance-based management systems that are viewed as fair and credible by workers.
The Bush administration, however, thinks the across-the-board raises provided through the General Schedule do not permit agencies to make distinctions among employees and thwart efforts to give higher raises to top performers.
In keeping with a 2002 law, Homeland Security is designing a pay system that will provide employees with raises more closely tied to their occupations and geographic location. The best workers will also receive higher raises that reflect their job performance. Employees who are deemed unsatisfactory will be at risk of not getting a raise.
The new pay system, when in place, will cover as many as 85,000 civil service employees, with a substantial number in jobs related to law enforcement. One goal of the new system is to more rigorously link annual pay raises to job performance ratings.
The initial rollout will involve 18,000 to 20,000 employees who are not covered by union contracts. Under the plan, managers, supervisors and nonunion employees will move to a new pay system, featuring broad salary scales based on occupations, next January.
In the second phase, 60,000 to 65,000 employees, including most employees covered by union contracts, will convert to the new pay system in January 2008.
Prillaman said that about 2,000 Homeland Security managers have received training on a new system for evaluating the job performance of employees and that up to 5,000 additional managers will be trained.
"The plan is not to go out and do massive harm to employees of this department. Quite the contrary," Prillaman said. "It is to give them a clearer picture of how they succeed and better recognition for that success. It is not a Machiavellian plot.
"In the end, the department's goal is the same as the employees' goal," he said. "You want to be able to have high-quality people in the organization who succeed in their job and want to stay for the long run. That is what employees want, and that is what the department wants."
Court Battle Continues Over Defense Union's Bargaining Rights
By Stephen Barr
Thursday, January 10, 2008; Page D04
Just as it appeared the Ping-Pong battle between the Defense Department and its largest union was ending, the union has stepped up to the table for one last serve.
The American Federation of Government Employees this week filed an appeal with the Supreme Court to stop a Bush administration effort to curb union rights in the department. The appeal marks the latest bounce in a legal case that began five years ago.
Only a few weeks ago, the dispute seemed settled. Congress, as part of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, rejected the Pentagon's plan to weaken unions. The bill would place Defense labor relations and employee appeals back under regular civil service law, and unions would be able to continue negotiating binding contracts on the same scope of workplace issues as elsewhere in government.
But President Bush used a pocket veto to stop the bill over an entirely different issue -- a provision that officials said could leave Iraq's government and assets vulnerable to lawsuits from victims of Saddam Hussein. The union had hoped that Bush would sign the defense bill before Jan. 7, the union's deadline for filing a petition to the Supreme Court.
With the bill stalled, AFGE decided to put its legal case back in play. AFGE is contesting a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals last May that went in favor of the Pentagon. That ruling ended a string of union victories in court over the Bush administration's plan to restrict bargaining rights at the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
AFGE, in the petition, contends that the appeals court ruling "is in conflict" with another federal court decision in a similar case involving Homeland Security. Federal judges did not permit that department to severely curtail union rights, AFGE said, while a separate, three-judge appeals court panel, by 2 to 1, said the Defense Department could go ahead with its plan to curtail union rights.
The court fight grew out of workplace rules adopted by the Bush administration as part of the new National Security Personnel System being phased in and currently covers about 130,000 nonunion civilians at Defense. Bush officials have backed the new personnel system, which includes performance-based pay, as a way to reward the best workers and more efficiently address workplace issues.
But labor leaders, especially in the past year, have lobbied key Democratic representatives and senators to repeal the workplace rules, which were authorized in 2003 when Republicans controlled Congress.
House and Senate negotiators came up with a compromise -- restoring union rights but allowing the Pentagon to link part of the annual employee pay raise to job performance.
The White House has not objected to the compromise, suggesting that it will remain in the next version of the defense authorization bill Congress sends Bush. Legislation may remain the union's best chance of reversing the Pentagon workplace rules because the Supreme Court takes up a fraction of petitions filed every year.
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