Posted on 03/23/2017 6:50:43 PM PDT by mdittmar
Reform plan would gut worker rights, foster discrimination,
increase inequality
WASHINGTON – The American Federation of Government Employees rejects a new report that recommends overhauling the personnel system for civilian employees in the Department of Defense, since it largely rehashes failed policies of the past and would undermine the government’s merit-based civil service system.
“The importance of maintaining a nonpartisan, apolitical civil service in an increasingly partisan environment cannot be overstated,” AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel.
“Calls to make it easier to fire a federal employee by decreasing due process rights or speeding up the removal process are ‘dog whistles’ for making the career service subject to the partisan or personal whims of a few supervisors or political appointees.”
A new report by the Bipartisan Policy Center recommends moving DoD civilians from Title 5 to Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which would eliminate most civil service protections and give the Secretary of Defense total discretion to set and adjust pay.
The proposals largely mimic reforms that have been rejected in the past – specifically the National Security Personnel System, a pay-for-performance scheme that was repealed by Congress after just three years because it discriminated against employees who were non-white or worked outside the Pentagon. Undeterred, DoD leaders attempted to resurrect NSPS a few years ago with a plan called Force of the Future, which proposed moving employees to Title 10.
“AFGE strongly opposes any and all efforts to restore NSPS, whether under the guise of Force of the Future or by any other name, including the just released report of Bipartisan Policy Center. The flaws of that system were well-documented and there is certainty that a revival would reproduce all the discriminatory effects of its earlier incarnation,” Cox said.
Cox said these proposals must be rejected because they violate the fundamental principle of having a merit-based civil service system, which ensures personnel decisions are based on an employee’s ability to do the job and not his or her political connections.
“Due process rights, including union rights, for civil servants at DoD or other agencies provides accountability to the public for both managers and political appointees and is a cornerstone of our system of democracy and should not be treated as expendable,” Cox said.
Government “servants” should NOT be unionized.
Fire a whole lot of people, that tends to focus the minds of the survivors
You wouldn’t believe the good people that get fired and get no representation, and you wouldn’t believe the retards that get a firing reversed. Like anything else in government, it all depends on who you are.
in general, govt civil servants should not be, and should not need to be, unionized
but this is ESPECIALLY true in defense/intelligence/security/military type jobs!
maybe DJT can fix this?
Really, when was that ever true?
AFGE is probably the most ANTI-merit organization operating anywhere in government. With a monopoly on forcing grievance talks upon the middle and upper level management, their ONLY purpose is to insure that ANY employee who may and should be terminated “for cause” is authorized to REMAIN on duty, collecting full pay, even if no actual work is being performed, and that the Federal government reimburse the employee fully for any legal expenses incurred.
They are leeches, pure and simple. And they are doing it all for “the poor, downtrodden workers”, like HA! I was there for twenty-plus years, and their major “contribution” was work slowdown and stall tactics.
“Nonpartisan, apolitical civil service”- what a horse laugh! The AFGE is as political as you can get.
Understood. I’ve seen similar abuses by a couple other unions too. Civil service has so many benefits and legal protections that unions should not even be “necessary “ for most things that unions normally do
I sat about seven years go...inprocessing to a gov’t job in the DC region. We came to the last hour, and the union person came in for a 3-minute chat with 20 of us on the in-processing group. Then she attempted to hand out the sheets that help gain us membership with the union. All 20 of us refused the sheets....zero interest. I noted this.
In the office about a week later, I brought this up. One of the long-term guys figured that in our agency group of 2,000 odd civilians...there might be 150 who were union folks, and the bulk were not. They weren’t having any luck in getting members to some point where they were a part of some negotiation power.
Maybe in the 1960s...there might have been some reason for unions to still exist. But there are so many rules today, and general benefit packages....that the whole union discussion for government employees is silly.
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