Letter: No more changes to General Schedule system

Regarding "Unions expect to negotiate new rules": All federal employees should oppose any changes and/or legislation that attempts to change the [General Schedule] because these actions have proven thus far to politicize the GS system. The chipping away at the GS system will ultimately throw the government into a pay and benefit crisis.

The system must remain uniform for all of government under the GS system to prevent further problems. Congress needs to go back an reaffirm this system. Unions, and even the Federal Managers Association should support Congress reversing any prior changes to the GS system, such as [National Security Personnel System] and abolish those systems, and place those employees back under GS. The effect of changes to the GS system have been to politicize the federal service in attempts to truncate federal employees rights, forcing them to become political operatives of the administration currently in power under the guise of pay for performance. You get the behavior you reward in the federal service.

Employees know that their performance rating depends on supervisors that often become pawns of high-level political officials. Employees will not get a fair rating or performance award due to politics, unless they are a company person and/or administration friend. These political operatives confuse “honest dissent with disloyalty”.

The changes to the GS system force behavorial changes to federal employees, because it gives the appearance of palpable pressure from supervisors to conform, or be an outcast with a low rating. These new alternatives to the GS system are attempts to get rid of unions, and not provide dispute systems for other nonunion employee in the government so the political administration in power at the time creates “company employees” that will agree with these political operatives, in attempts to have federal employees abrogate their responsibilities to the taxpayers.

In recent years, attempts have been made by political operatives to eliminate the 59-year-old GS system and replace it with pay systems they think will emphasize "pay for performance" to meet their political agenda. These operative’s motives are disingenuous, or they do not understand the current GS system. They [prefer] that federal pay increases should be awarded based more on merit and work performance and less on seniority and length of service -- which is misguided.

What they fail to understand or acknowledge is that if managers properly implement the existing GS system and OPM rules and regulations, work is and has been rewarded based on merit and work performance, not a political system as these operatives are attempting to implement. The men who wrote the Constitution over 200 years ago knew it would stand the test of time. So did our Congressional Representatives in the early 1920’s and 1940’s that passed legislation creating the GS schedule that ensured federal employees where treated equally and received the same pay for the same work, without politicizing the GS system. Unions and managers need to fight to have Congress only use the GS governmentwide.

Anonymous

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