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PRESIDENTS CORNER
NSPS
In a do-over the House and the Senate have approved a little different version of the fiscal 2008 DoD authorization bill that passed Congress in December and President Bush pocket vetoed. The bill was revised mainly to take into account the White House’s objections about an Iraqi assets policy that brought about the veto. The final bill provides for the 3.5 percent military raise to be retroactive to the start of the year. That catches them up with federal employees that received their larger raise through different legislation. No changes were made to other sections of the Pentagon Authorization bill. The language to repeal some of the previous authorities the department has under its national security personnel system was untouched. Wage employees are excluded from the NSPS program. How that will affect NGB’s implementation of the personnel system for bargaining unit members remains to be seen. The President has signed the bill.
The bill will allow DoD to proceed with the new pay for performance elements. However, the bill contains several new restrictions with requirements excluding prevailing rate employees from NSPS to include requirements that any changes in pay policies be negotiable for any union-represented employees moved into NSPS to the extent of current bargaining laws, again we will have to wait and see what affect these new requirements will have.
At a recent luncheon with Deputy Secretary Gordon England, he indicated that the Department would continue the current policy of not including bargaining unit members pending the end result of the legislation. Now that it has passed we would expect there will be numerous meetings between the coalition and DoD representatives with that policy being a major topic of discussion and resolution.
Washington Rally
On the 27th and 28th of the month ACT will be holding its annual rally in Washington. So far we have a good turnout of chapters attending. We hold training on the 26th as well. Training will be conducted by the Department of Labor with topics ranging from fiduciary reporting responsibilities to workers compensation matters. Hopefully the training will be a great learning experience for all. Then two days on the hill to work on our desired legislation agenda. Several of the other unions are scheduled to conduct their legislative rallies this month and March as well. Our rally will be the only rally that we have planned for this year. With the national presidential elections and the end of the 110th Congress the Board decided that conducting a rally in late September would not be productive. In September we have only scheduled the annual business meeting with a training agenda yet to be finalized. If your chapter officials were unable to participate in the rally we would hope they will attend the business meeting.
ACT 2008 Elections
ACT will also be conducting its national board elections this year. The office of President, Treasurer and NW and NE Vice President will be on the ballot. See nominations notice elsewhere in this edition.
Keep the Faith, Tom
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