DHS Withdraws Bid to Curb Union Rights
By Stephen Barr
The Washington Post
Wednesday 20 February 2008
A lengthy fight, in the courts and on Capitol
Hill, has come to an end.
The Department of Homeland Security, in a court
filing Friday, said it will not pursue rules to curb
union rights and will abide by regular civil service
labor-management procedures.
Shortly afterward, a federal court issued an
order closing the case, and the union that fought the
rules declared victory.
Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National
Treasury Employees Union, yesterday called the result "a
welcome end to a battle well worth fighting."
The battle began in the summer of 2002, when the
Bush administration signaled that it wanted to create a
separate personnel system for Homeland Security,
changing how employees would be paid, promoted and
disciplined.
Bush officials contended that the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks required changes that would give more
discretion to managers and permit quicker deployment of
workers without notifying their union representatives.
The plan outraged federal union leaders and a
number of Democrats in Congress. When the department and
the Office of Personnel Management issued rules for a
new personnel system in February 2005, the NTEU and
other employee groups sued. The union also began
lobbying campaigns to stop the rules on Capitol Hill.
The proposed rules would have allowed the
Department of Homeland Security to override any
provision in a union contract by issuing a
department-wide directive. The rules also would have
made it difficult, if not impossible, for unions to
negotiate over arrangements for staffing, deployments,
technology and other workplace matters.
In August 2005, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M.
Collyer blocked the department's plan, saying it did not
ensure collective-bargaining rights for Homeland
Security employees. A year later, a federal appeals
court ruled against the department.
Congress also had a hand in forcing the
department to throw in the towel. The fiscal 2008
appropriations bill for the Homeland Security Department
provided no funding for a new personnel system, pending
resolution of the litigation. The Bush administration is
in its last year in office, making it difficult for the
department to push back on the issue.
Asked yesterday about the court filing, Larry
Orluskie, a Homeland Security spokesman, said, "This
decision permits the department to focus on implementing
its human resources management system rather than spend
additional time in litigation."
Last year, department officials said they wanted
to focus on establishing a new performance management
system. Employees will be rated on four levels:
unacceptable, achieved expectations, exceeded
expectations and achieved excellence. In particular,
officials hope the rating system will provide a way for
managers to better identify poor-performing workers and
help them do a better job or, as a last resort, force
them to leave.
Officials have not signaled that they want to
link the job ratings to salary decisions, a step that
has been taken by the Defense Department through its new
National Security Personnel System.
Kelley, the union president, said yesterday that
she will continue to oppose any personnel system
changes, including new job ratings, under consideration
by the department. If the department decides to make any
changes, they will be subject to the completion of
bargaining and to any funding restrictions, she said.
Last month, as stock prices dropped, the
lifecycle funds at the Thrift Savings Plan did better
than the TSP's big equity funds, officials told the
Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board yesterday.
While all TSP stock funds lost money in January,
the lifecycle funds, which are geared to retirement
dates, did not fall as much.
The 2040 lifecycle fund, for instance, lost 5.37
percent, but that decline in value was smaller than for
the TSP's international stock fund (down 8.52 percent),
small company fund (down 6.27 percent) and large company
fund (down 5.98 percent).
Andrew M. Saul, the board chairman, called the
January returns "bad losses" for the program but said
the lifecycle funds, which were added to the Thrift
Savings Plan in 2005, showed the value of a diversified
portfolio. The TSP's lifecycle funds were not far off
the performance of Wall Street's complex hedge funds,
which were down about 3 percent, on average, he said.
The board also heard from Labor Department
auditors, who urged the TSP to step up efforts to
protect information in laptops and other portable
computer devices. TSP officials accepted the
recommendations and noted that software had been
installed to permit remote destruction of data if a
laptop is lost or stolen