FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 12, 2005
September 12, 2005
Jemarion Jones
(202) 639-6405
(202) 639-6405
AFGE Launches Advertising Campaign Highlighting Dangers of New Defense Department Personnel Regulations
(Washington)—The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), along with the United Department of Defense Workers Coalition (UDWC), is launching a new advertising campaign to highlight the Department of Defense’s (DOD) efforts to implement a new set of personnel rules that will curtail employee rights, lower worker morale and weaken national security.
The campaign includes both print and radio advertisements. In the print advertisement, Keith Hill, an AFGE member and Vietnam veteran, discusses his son’s deployment to Iraq and his own recent deployment to Afghanistan. In the ad, Hill says he is “proud to serve” but that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is now calling his patriotism, as well as the patriotism of other civilian DOD employees, into question.
In addition to questioning the patriotism of loyal DOD civilian workers, the ad goes on to describe DOD’s efforts to eliminate employee rights and protections that cover civilian workers through a new set of personnel rules called the National Security Personnel System (NSPS). For the full text of the ad, please visit www.afge.org.
NSPS would allow for the deployment of civilian workers anywhere in the world—even in war zones. Additionally, it would reduce pay and encourage favoritism by implementing a so-called “pay for performance” scheme by which employees would win raises based on performance reviews for which no objective standards have been drawn. NSPS would also eliminate meaningful collective bargaining, weaken whistleblower protections and cost American taxpayers millions of dollars.
“The same cronyism and favoritism that will result from the implementation of NSPS will mirror what has happened with FEMA and their inept handling of the biggest natural disaster this country has ever faced,” says AFGE National President John Gage. “Cronyism and favoritism eviscerated FEMA. We see the evidence of this every day when we look at the devastation in the Gulf Coast and the hundreds of thousands of people who are out of work and homeless because unqualified individuals were put in charge of a situation that demanded high levels of experience.”
The print advertisement will run nationwide and companion radio ads will run in Norfolk, Va., Richmond, Va., Boston and Washington, D.C. in the next few weeks.
The ad was paid for by UDWC, an alliance of labor unions representing civilian defense workers. AFGE is a member of UDWC.
http://www.afge.org/index.cfm?page=defenseconference&fuse=content&contentid=130
The campaign includes both print and radio advertisements. In the print advertisement, Keith Hill, an AFGE member and Vietnam veteran, discusses his son’s deployment to Iraq and his own recent deployment to Afghanistan. In the ad, Hill says he is “proud to serve” but that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is now calling his patriotism, as well as the patriotism of other civilian DOD employees, into question.
In addition to questioning the patriotism of loyal DOD civilian workers, the ad goes on to describe DOD’s efforts to eliminate employee rights and protections that cover civilian workers through a new set of personnel rules called the National Security Personnel System (NSPS). For the full text of the ad, please visit www.afge.org.
NSPS would allow for the deployment of civilian workers anywhere in the world—even in war zones. Additionally, it would reduce pay and encourage favoritism by implementing a so-called “pay for performance” scheme by which employees would win raises based on performance reviews for which no objective standards have been drawn. NSPS would also eliminate meaningful collective bargaining, weaken whistleblower protections and cost American taxpayers millions of dollars.
“The same cronyism and favoritism that will result from the implementation of NSPS will mirror what has happened with FEMA and their inept handling of the biggest natural disaster this country has ever faced,” says AFGE National President John Gage. “Cronyism and favoritism eviscerated FEMA. We see the evidence of this every day when we look at the devastation in the Gulf Coast and the hundreds of thousands of people who are out of work and homeless because unqualified individuals were put in charge of a situation that demanded high levels of experience.”
The print advertisement will run nationwide and companion radio ads will run in Norfolk, Va., Richmond, Va., Boston and Washington, D.C. in the next few weeks.
The ad was paid for by UDWC, an alliance of labor unions representing civilian defense workers. AFGE is a member of UDWC.
http://www.afge.org/index.cfm?page=defenseconference&fuse=content&contentid=130
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