DOD Personnel Plan Spurs Protest March

[Rose Siding]

For the second year in a row, hundreds of federal employees marched on Capitol Hill yesterday to protest new personnel rules for the Defense Department that union leaders say would weaken civilian workers' rights and erode the quality of their jobs without enhancing national security.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees said they will urge lawmakers to take a hard look at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's plans to rewrite work rules affecting nearly 750,000 civilian workers. Leaders of other federal employee unions said their members will take the same message to congressional offices in the coming weeks.

The actual rules are to be released in the next few days, although union officials have gotten glimpses of their guiding principles during discussions with defense officials. The rules "are a massive overhaul that will gut pay standards, appeal rights and collective-bargaining rights," John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said during the AFGE's annual legislative conference yesterday. "These new rules will turn good jobs . . . into McJobs, Wal-Mart-type jobs."
...
Congress gave Pentagon officials authority to craft a new personnel system in 2003 after Rumsfeld argued that managers needed more power over how workers are paid, promoted, deployed and disciplined to better fight the war on terrorism. The administration won similar authority to rewrite personnel rules as part of legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9069-2005Feb8.html?nav=rss_politics

[CarbonDate]

1. I'm not entirely opposed to this

When someone gets entrenched at DoD, it's almost impossible to get rid of them, I've noticed. We have way too many over-paid, under-qualified, and under-ambitious civilians in DoD. The majority of DoD civilians are high quality, but there's always a few bad apples, and they seem to linger on the tree longer than most. Maybe not as drastic as Rummy is proposing, but some changes are in order.

[Erika]

3. I have worked in the government arena all my life.

The major non-productive employees I have known are political appointees. I will admit that a few "working" employees in both private and public employment are dead weight. I wonder if Rummy is going after the dead weight at Halliburton

[CAG]

4. What, you mean not every worker in the private sector....

is the hardest working individual on the face of the earth?

I've always been led to believe those govr'mint byerocrats are all a bunch of lazy do-nothins wastin our taxpayin money,
while all that money I spend to the drug company, insurance man, enron electric company, and halliburton highway construction contractor is going to 100% hard-workin amuricuns (except for those lazy union people).

At least thats what Newt tells me...

[Politiclo8]

5. I work for the DOD..............

and the problem with the plan is that no one knows what the evaluation criteria will be. The DOD has kept everything secret from the unions and that is why it is so frustrating and why union members like me are mad.
All we know is is that the plan will give unspecified authority to managers to discipline workers up to firing them with or without a good reason.
Rummy has even kept members of Congress in the dark and we know what happens to Americans when this administration keeps us in the dark............. nothing good!!!!!!!!!!!

[Erika]

2. Bush is turning us all into McJob workers

Our standard of living has gone down each year under the Bush regime and the discrepance between the rich and poor grows.

He is a corporate globalist first and foremost and he's selling us down the river to corporate profit. Rove is his henchman.