Bush administration attempts to gut worker rights by rewriting personnel systems, civil service

A unanimous U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in late June upheld a lower court’s ruling barring implementation of labor relations provisions in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) new human resources system because they fail to ensure collective bargaining, as required by the Homeland Security Act (HSA) of 2002.

Cumulatively, the labor relations provisions “permit unilateral abrogation of collectively bargained contracts,” according to the 50-page decision that characterized the DHS’s position on collective bargaining as defying common sense. “To imagine that a system might ‘ensure collective bargaining’ without imposing mutual obligations is simply bizarre.”

The three-judge panel also reversed the lower court’s ruling upholding the department’s authority to limit the scope of bargaining. Citing the lower court’s finding that “the human resources system essentially reduces collective bargaining to employee-specific terms affecting discipline, discharge and promotion,” the appeals court judges said, “this is so far short of the meaning of [federal sector] collective bargaining” that it “does not meet the HSA’s requirement of bargaining in good faith over conditions of employment for purposes of reaching an ­agreement.”

Between limiting the scope of negotiable issues and providing management with unilateral rights to ignore agreements, the judges write that the system “does not even give an illusion of collective bargaining.”

As many may recall, the HSA merged nearly two dozen federal agencies employing approximately 170,000 employees represented by 17 unions. DHS issued its final rule establishing the human resources system in February 2005.

In addition to DHS, the Bush administration is attempting to exploit congressional authorization to develop a new personnel system at the Department of Defense. In February, however, a district court blocked implementation of labor relations regulations in the Defense Department’s so-called National ­Security Personnel System (NSPS) because they “eviscerated collective bargaining” despite a congressional requirement that the new personnel system ensure it. NSPS covers more than 350,000 civilian Defense Department employees, in­cluding nearly 1,000 teachers on military bases worldwide who are repre­sented by the AFT’s Overseas Federation of Teachers.

More than three dozen unions, AFL-CIO-affiliated unions as well as independent groups, have banded together to fight the DHS and Defense Department personnel systems.

Despite its legal defeats, the Bush administration is expected to pursue broader federal civil service reforms after the November elections. The White House’s draft proposal is called the Working for America Act.