Statement by Edward J. McElroy,
President, American Federation of Teachers,
On Federal Court Ruling Blocking Bush Administration’s Attack on Workers’ Rights

U.S. District Court rules against the Pentagon’s National Security Personnel System (NSPS), noting that the new regulations ‘entirely eviscerate collective bargaining.’

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week’s Federal District Court ruling is a victory for working men and women over a plan that would have eliminated the collective bargaining rights of more than 350,000 Department of Defense employees.  Among them are the AFT’s Overseas Federation of Teachers, representing nearly 1,000 teachers on military bases around the world, who have used their collective bargaining rights to improve not only their own working conditions and their families’ lives but also the education of the students they teach.  

The administration’s claim that a new personnel and pay system is needed to fight the war on terror was a hollow pretense for denying defense workers the right to due process and collective bargaining.  The Pentagon’s proposed system would have turned the clock back, reopening the door to the biased and subjective personnel system at the whim of the managers that the current federal system was designed to correct. 

Unions will always be receptive to discussing necessary changes to personnel policy, especially for something as important as national security.  But this decision by a federal court makes it clear that dismantling the rights of government employees is not the appropriate path to a more secure nation. 

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