Lawmakers Worry Pentagon's Pay System Won't Fit the Bill

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101501670.html

By Stephen Barr
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; Page D04

Employee concerns about the new performance-based pay system for Defense Department civilians have reached the ears of three House members from Virginia.

In a letter to the Pentagon, Republicans Frank R. Wolf and Thomas M. Davis III and Democrat James P. Moran Jr. said they had been contacted by "numerous constituents gravely concerned" about their 2008 pay raise under the new program, called the National Security Personnel System or NSPS.

"We must keep our promises to our employees," the three wrote in the letter, sent last week. "It would be difficult if not impossible to recruit or retain employees if they knew they could not rely on their promised salaries."

The Pentagon, in a memo last month, said that about 110,000 employees covered by the NSPS would receive one-half of the pay raise provided to other civil service employees and that the other half of the raise would go into "pay pools" -- for distribution as raises and bonuses based on job performance.

The NSPS, which uses five performance levels to rate employees, is rolling out in phases, with nonunion employees making up the first wave of conversions. The decision to more closely tie pay raises to performance ratings is the Pentagon's first big step away from the government's primary pay system, the General Schedule.

(The Pentagon had previously decided not to give raises to NSPS-covered employees judged to be performing at an unacceptable level, a move that officials also called a break with the General Schedule.)

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