Homeland Security's 160,000 Workers
Retain Right to Collective Bargaining

Faced with a federal appeals court ruling against the personnel system it unilaterally imposed on its 160,000 employees in 2005, Homeland Security officials said they would abandon their anti-worker rules and "proceed with labor relations pursuant to applicable law."

The court's ruling means that Homeland Security will be required to respect the right of unions to represent their employees in collective bargaining and to open the door to negotiations on wages, benefits and conditions of employment.

It was an embarrassing defeat for President Bush, who, in 2004, had announced plans to transform federal personnel rules so that government employees would be deprived of many basic rights, including the right of collective bargaining through their chosen union representatives.

The Bush administration's initial targets were the several million employees at the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), whose workers had been represented by unions for years. It used the September 11, 2002 tragedy as the basis for instituting anti-union rules, arguing that to protect the country against terrorism required the government to exercise tight control over its employees.

When DHS began to implement its new, restrictive rules in 2005, a number of unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), filed a suit that led U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer to block the department from going ahead.

The coalition of unions conducted a many-sided campaign against the DHS personnel system, appealing to Congress, arguing in the courts and taking their case to the general public. Union leaders challenged the Bush administration to explain how allowing unions to negotiate contracts for workers was a threat to the nation' security. (The Defense Department also had to retreat from its plan to deprive its civilian employees of basic worker rights.)

A year later, a three-judge federal appeals court panel turned down the Homeland Security appeal and wrote that the new personnel system "not only defies the well-understood meaning of collective bargaining, it also defies common sense." The court also said the new workplace rules "do not even give the illusion of collective bargaining" and that parts of it are simply "bizarre."

AFGE General Council Mark Roth said the Bush administration acted "shamefully" by misusing the 9/11 tragedy "to push the right-wing's anti-union agenda." He said DHS workers were "ecstatic" that their bargaining rights were protected.

Colleen Kelly, president of the independent National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), said : "The labor regulations DHS wanted to implement — and the White House wanted to extend throughout the government‹were an effort to reduce employee workplace rights and give managers the unfettered discretion to alter fundamental working conditions, essentially at will."

President Bush, during his eight years in office, has also used the Labor Department and presidential executive orders to undermine worker rights and hamstring unions, with some success. Unions must continue to remain alert to Jan. 20, 2009 when Bush will no longer occupy the White House.

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