A new Department of Defense proposal to reshape the way it recruits, compensates and manages employees landed with a thud of discontent from unions.
The American Federation of Government Employees released the proposal on Sept. 15, decrying the plan as a revisit to "failed policies from the Bush administration."
"The Department of Defense is spinning these proposals as the 'Force of the Future,' but they are nothing more than a bad flashback," AFGE president J. David Cox Sr. said, in a statement.
The flashback, in this case, references the National Security Personnel System, a 2004-era pay and performance system that moved the DoD away from the General Schedule pay grades and scrapped automatic annual pay raises for greater discretion within the department.
The new proposal, outlined in the "pre-decision" document, revisits the flexibility compensation plan. Under the new plan, non-bargaining unit civilian workforce within the DoD with shift from Title 5 authorities to Title 10 authority, allowing the Pentagon the ability to assess those employees not through guidance provided by Office of Personnel Management, but through other means "including written examinations, skills tests, personality tests and psychological evaluation."
Compensation, promotion, the timeframe of advancement and evaluation would all be determined on the management level for these employees, an estimated 15-20 percent of the Pentagon workforce.
A statement released by AFGE called the planned shift from Title 5 to Title 10 was "filled with vague, non-specific and often conflicting statements about how this change would apply to the workforce and which employees would be affected."
A 2008 analysis of the NSPS by Federal Times found the flexibility was both inconsistent and "riddled with inequality."
The NSPS was later repealed in 2009 and DoD employees returned to the GS system in 2012.
The new proposal is seen a portion of the department's broader Force of the Future plan to overhaul the entire defense personnel structure.
Cox said the AFGE was still evaluating the proposal, but initial plans stand in stark contrasts to the interest of federal workers.
"It is clear that this move would give the current Defense secretary and any future secretary a blank check to craft a personnel system that could easily undermine and violate the fundamental principles of our long-established commitment to a merit-based civil service system," Cox said. "We believe all employees should remain under Title 5, and be afforded the rights protected therein."
