DoD Moves to Launch Personnel System

The Pentagon has issued final rules to carry out its national security personnel system, with a goal of implementing new labor-management rules effective November 27. The rest of the changes, involving scrapping the general schedule pay system—and later, the wage grade system as well—in favor of pay banding with pay-for-performance, along with streamlined employee appeal procedures and numerous other changes, are to be phased in over several years, by groups of employees previously announced. The first group, about 65,000 mostly GS employees in what DoD terms Spiral 1.1, are to move into the new system in February, followed by about another 48,000 in Spiral 1.1 in the March-April timeframe and another roughly 160,000 in Spiral 1.3 in the September-October period. Most of the remainder of DoD’s roughly 650,000 employees would follow later.