The Defense Department has begun converting about 35,000 more employees from the old general schedule personnel system to its new national security personnel system.
A district court blocked labor-management provisions of the new system but as the department awaits the results of its appeal it continues to move forward with the rollout for non-bargaining unit begun last spring with "spiral 1.1."
The latest phase — taken together with last October’s spiral 1.2 — brings the size of the rollout to about 114,000.
Civilian employees converting to NSPS are placed in a career group and then assigned a pay schedule composed of bands, differentiating between full performance and expert, for example. Pay and bonuses are dished out from a pool administered by a manager and are tied to performance plans and appraisals.
The bulk of the current increase is taking place in the Army with over 26,000, followed by the Navy with more than 7,500, and in the Air Force, which said it converted about 1,800 on March 18.
