From C. Speece, June 2003
Greetings,
Last fall, as the administration fought so hard to strip employees of the Department of Homeland Security of worker rights, I warned that a similar fate could await other federal employees, including us. I scarcely expected the move to come so soon. First it was 180,000 DHS employees, now 746,000 civilians at DOD, and tomorrow? Maybe bank examiners.
I've included a the link to a June 8 Washington Post article, although I don't know how long the link will be active. Some excerpts follow:
In the name of reshaping the federal bureaucracy to better counter global terrorism, administration officials are seeking the authority to rewrite long-standing pay and personnel rules governing 746,000 civilian employees at the Department of Defense. The powers would be similar to those won by the administration last year in a contentious battle over the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, which has about 180,000 employees.
Confined to these agencies alone, the changes would affect more than 45 percent of the government's 2 million civilian employees. But few analysts expect the changes to stop with defense-related agencies.
"The lineup of agencies for these kinds of authorities is going to be equal to that of a summer blockbuster movie," said Paul C. Light, a government scholar at New York University and the Brookings Institution. "Everyone wants out. Once Defense goes, it's everybody for the gates."
In the biggest change likely to be approved, Defense employees could no longer count on the guaranteed annual pay raise that many federal workers hold sacred. Officials would implement pay-for-performance systems in which compensation would be tied to annual job evaluations, with poor performers getting little or no raise, or perhaps even a pay cut. The General Schedule, the current 15-grade pay system, would be replaced by more general pay ranges in a system known as pay banding.
Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said administration officials have offered few specifics about what they intend to erect in place of the current system, while sending a message that they have a low opinion of federal employees.
"Most federal employees would say that they are accountable every day, and they want to be," Kelley said. "But they want to know that there is a credible system in place that they will be measured against, and that it won't be a system of favoritism or of nepotism."
Check out "Bush Seeks Federal Workforce Overhaul (washingtonpost.com)