The new personnel system at the Department of Homeland Security, to be implemented no later than August, could immediately affect other federal agencies whose work rules remain unchanged, according to the head of the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Board Chairman Neil A.G. McPhie told a congressional subcommittee last week that new rules designed to speed up disciplinary actions and employee appeals at the DHS could force the independent MSPB, which hears appeals and adjudicates penalties, to give DHS cases priority over similar disputes at other agencies.
"It is possible that the board will have to create a separate track for these cases and place a higher priority on these cases than on other equally important cases" from other federal departments, McPhie told the House Government Reform subcommittee on the federal workforce and agency organization. The panel held a hearing Wednesday on the new DHS rules.
DHS officials say the new personnel system, which will take years to fully implement, will enable managers to more strongly tie pay to performance and move people and money more quickly to better counter terrorist threats.
The new plan will replace the General Schedule pay system with one of broad salary ranges and will link raises to annual performance evaluations. It curtails the power of labor unions by no longer requiring DHS officials to negotiate over such matters as where employees will be deployed, the type of work they will do and the equipment they will use. And it streamlines the process for disciplining employees and hearing their appeals of any punishment.
Under the new system, for instance, MSPB administrative law judges will have to decide cases within 90 days, instead of the current 120-day standard, and the clock will start ticking sooner than under the present system.
"We can meet the time frame," McPhie said. "The question is, once we meet those expedited time frames, how does it affect everything else? There is a potential for negative impact. We won't know for sure. . . . This stuff is a work in progress."
Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.), the subcommittee's chairman, said, "It sounds like you are expecting a major burden upon your organization."
The MSPB is quasi-judicial agency whose mission is to ensure that federal hiring adheres to merit-system principles, that federal agencies act within personnel rules and that federal employees are protected against abuse by managers. It decides more than 8,000 cases a year and fought to retain its role under the new DHS personnel system.
Federal employee unions have derided the new system, saying it will limit workers' rights and pay without improving homeland security. Several unions have sued the DHS in U.S. District Court to block implementation of parts of the system.
McPhie said the new system does not gut workers' rights and retains due process for employees. But it will present challenges, he said. Those include new restrictions on the MSPB's ability to overturn unreasonable agency decisions and order lesser penalties, and new powers that allow the MSPB to render summary judgment in some cases, which for the first time would deprive employees of a hearing.
The hearing Wednesday did not address the impact on the MSPB of similar personnel rule changes underway at the Defense Department. The proposed system there would give Pentagon officials the right to modify or reverse decisions made by MSPB administrative law judges. Employees could still seek a hearing before the full board, but the standard for overturning punishment would be higher.
