The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced this week that it was scrapping plans for a new personnel system that would have featured pay-for-performance due to funding being eliminated for the plan.
Tom Cairns, the chief human capital officer for DHS, issued a memo to DHS employees explaining that a provision in HR 2638, the omnibus bill that includes the fiscal 2009 DHS budget, signed into law Tuesday by President Bush "prohibits spending funds to operate our new DHS human resources management system."
The personnel system, formerly known as Max HR, that would have replaced the General Schedule (GS) familiar to most civil servants has already had a difficult path. Authorized by Congress in 2002 when it created DHS, the system was halted by a series of court rulings in 2006. The department pressed on with the performance management, appeals and adverse actions portion of the system anyway, but decided to put the pay-for-performance portion on hold in 2007.
The new law returns employees to Title 5 regulations that have managed civil servants for decades and eliminates pay-for-performance at DHS, except at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). TSA's personnel system was formed under a different statute.
About 35,000 nonbargaining employees had converted to the new personnel program and DHS had requested $5 million from Congress to continue the system in fiscal 2009.
Federal labor unions praised the repeal of the program. Mark Roth, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, said, "It's a nice goodbye kiss to this administration."
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