The Pentagon last week unveiled its plans to push 65,000 civil service employees into the new performance-based pay system under the National Security Personnel System. Several unions immediately lined up to challenge the action in court. Members of a coalition led by the American Federation of Government Employees say they will file a lawsuit this month to block DOD’s plan for reorganizing labor and management relations, according to the Washington Post. The unions point to the fact that a federal judge has blocked implementation of similar rules at the Department of Homeland Security. The federal government developed the new personnel plan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when officials successfully argued that they needed to be able to manage the civilian work force according to mission requirements and not by bureaucratic imperatives.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…