President Brown Submits Testimony to House Committee Urging Repeal of NSPS
Thursday, April 16, 2009(National Federation of Federal Employees)
Earlier this week, NFFE
National President Richard N. Brown submitted
testimony to the House Armed Services Committee
Subcommittee on Readiness regarding the future
of the controversial National Security
Personnel System (NSPS).
The hearing was held in
the wake of growing criticism of the system
from federal employee unions and high-ranking
members of Congress.
“NSPS
is a failed plan that has been fundamentally
flawed since its inception. NSPS was never
intended to be a modern, good government
personnel system. It was intended to eliminate
federal employee unions and suppress pay for
the majority of DoD workers,” said
Brown.
In a letter to Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, House Armed Services
Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) and
Subcommittee Chairman Solomon Ortiz (D-TX)
echoed President Brown’s concerns about the
efficacy of the system:
“The National Security
Personnel System of the Department of Defense
made wholesale changes to the current federal
employee system, resulting in widespread
distrust and discontent within the ranks of
hundreds of thousands of dedicated DOD
employees, both among those who have been
converted and those who have not been
converted.”
In response to these
concerns, DoD and the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) recently ordered a halt to
employee conversions to the system, pending a
joint review by the agencies.
“We applaud DoD for taking the time to review the personnel system, but this is by no means the end,” said Brown. “We will continue to voice our members concerns about this fundamentally flawed system until it is wiped clear from the books. We will accept nothing short of a complete repeal of NSPS.”