Unions Rule Regarding

NSPS

The revised version of the fiscal 2008 DoD Authorization Bill that would repeal DoD’s authority to revamp certain labor relations provisions such as by restricting the allowable scope of bargaining as well as it’s authority to impose new conditions on employee rights in the disciplinary process by shortening the process and limiting MSPB’s power to overturn management’s choice of penalties.

A major controversy regarding NSPS has been the labor relations’ provisions.  Many unions contend that the areas of allowable bargaining would be excessively narrowed resulting in negotiated agreements to not be enforced causing union complaints to be channeled into an internal DoD Labor Relations’ Board.

Also under this measure, several restrictions on the NSPS pay for performance system, which would specify that employees under NSPS who are performing above the unacceptable level must receive an annual raise of at least 60 percent of the amount going to federal employees generally.  Although the provision was not yet signed into law, DoD took the initiative to apply such a policy for the 2008 NSPS raises.

Included in this measure is the stipulation that if union-represented employees be brought into NSPS, changes in pay procedures for them would be subject to bargaining.  The bill also excludes wage grade employees from coming under NSPS as well as employees of certain defense labs that already are experimenting with alternative personnel systems.  It would further limit the number of employees who can be brought into the system to 100,000 a year and order a series of studies by GAO.

DoD has reported that the January 2008 raises for roughly 110,000 employees under NSPS averaged 5.9 percent which is substantially higher than the average 3.5 percent increase for federal employees in general.

For non-NSPS white-collar employees, the raise was paid as 2.5 percent across-the-board and 1 percentage point divided up as locality pay that ranged from about 0.5 percent to about 2 percent.  Those employees are also eligible for within-grade raises, which are worth about 3 percent of salary every one, two, or three years, plus performance based step increases and other forms of incentive pay.  NSPS does not have within-grade increases because it uses a pay banding system in which funds for other types of incentive pay are put in the performance pay pool.

Under NSPS, the 2008 payout was broken down as a 1.5 percent “pay-band adjustment” increase in base salary, a locality supplement equivalent to GS locality pay, 3.4 percent as a performance-based pay increase, plus an average additional 1.7 percent performance –based bonus (which unlike pay increases does not count toward retirement), bringing the average total increase to 7.6 percent.  Employees who were not in the system long enough to complete a cycle received the same raises as GS employees.

According to DoD, only 0.2 percent of NSPS-covered employees received “unacceptable” (level 1) rating sand thus received in increase, with 1.6 percent receiving “fair” (level 2) ratings and were ineligible for performance based increases but received the other types of increases.  About 57 percent were rated at level 3, 35 percent at level 4 and 5 percent at level 5.  Those that rated at level 3 and above will receive performance-based increases under a shares system.