Date: 2003-05-22
Speaker: TOM DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Virginia

Mr. Spea*ker. reclaiming my time. I thank the gentleman. but let me just say it is 320.000 uniform personnel doing jobs that civil servants are certainly capable of doing. These are 320.000 we had to call up from the Reserves to do work. potentially. that could have gone and stayed with their families and everything else because of these arcane rules. In addition to this. Under Secretary Wolfowitz testified under oath that this would increase the number of Federal civil servants. So this idea that it is going to lead to more contracting out is not only bunk. it is disingenuous. it is wrong. and I think it takes civil servants in the wrong direction. Let me correct a couple of other things that have been said in the debate. We had a Member yesterday say that the right to receive veterans preference is gone. the right to discrimination protection. gone. Veterans preference. located in chapters 33 and 35 of title V. those are nonwaivable under this legislation. Discrimination protection Is located in 2302(b)(2) of title V and explicitly referred to in this legislation. Overtime pay in chapter 55 of title V. also nonwaivable In fact. for middlelevel managers. what we have done is corrected some inequities in overtime pay. Currently. GS12s. 13s. and 14s receive less working overtime than they receive in ordinary pay. and we have corrected that in this. This is a benefit to managers. We have raised the level that SESrs and managers can get in bonus over what the current level is. So we have raised the levels of what Federal employees can earn. As far as collective bargaining. NSPS states that we must ensure that employees may organize. bargain collectively. and participate through labor organizations of their own choosing. As for the right to an attorney. which was alleged to have been taken away. we do not mention it. but neither does the underlying legislation. and we have established an independent review panel to consider employee grievances. We have worked hard on this legislation. We held a couple of hearings in the Committee on Government Reform on this. but. most importantly. this is designed from nine pilot programs where the Federal employees themselves have spoken to this and have voted strongly to opt for the new systems versus the existing system. It does not pay for performance. it pays on a seniority basis. This will allow us to expedite hiring. It will allow us to do the kinds of things that we have already given other Federal agencies. This is not new ground. There are numerous Federal agencies currently. in sections 71. 73. and 75. that we have waived or altered. and we do this here. In fact. there is less flexibility here than Congress recently gave to the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Speaker. I might add. my colleagues who are arguing against this opposed those provisions in the Department of Homeland Security bill. We had an ensuing election on this issue. The voters spoke. and I think we have visited this issue once. There are fewer flexibilities here than we have in that as well. I want to say a couple of other things. The Committee on Armed Services also had a daylong hearing and a 2day markup of the DOD authorization bill. Dozens of the amendments offered there were also offered in our committee. and the votes were party line on these issues. They want to bring these same issues to the floor. I am not happy with every part of this rule. I had several amendments. particularly on the procurement side. that were part of the Committee on Government Reforms markup that were not included in the DOD bill that I could not get offered here. I understand the disappointment of those Members who are not able to have those heard at this point. But 40.000 employees with over 20 years of experience want a new system. and defense of the current system not only leads to more outsourcing. It does not lead to the kind of performancebased pay and the salary levels that many of our best Federal employees are deserving of. I worked in the private sector for a number of years. I worked for a company where our best asset was not our computers or our building. it was our people. They walked out the door every night. and we prayed to get them back because replacing them was costly. it created more inefficiencies. and it made us less competitive. Those factors in the private sector ought to be extended to the public sector becaUse our employees are our best asset. too. But I think we need to treat them well. I think we need to give them appropriate safeguards. which this legislation does. The unknown and the concerns by some on the other side are that all of this is not written by Congress. But we have put appropriate safeguards in this legislation. This will be part of a later debate. but I certainly support the rule.