Some 160,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) workers scored a major victory against the Bush administration’s assault on their workplace rights when a federal judge blocked new DHS rules slated to begin Aug. 15.
“The regulations fail in their obligation to ensure collective bargaining rights to DHS employees,” U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said in her Aug. 12 ruling on a lawsuit filed by AFGE and other federal employee unions. The coalition of federal unions was instrumental in working to stop the implementation of the new rules, which would have slashed employees’ bargaining and workplace rights and civil service pay scales.
In her decision, Collyer said the rules––imposed unilaterally by DHS, despite workers’ efforts to take part in crafting them––would result in federal unions bargaining “on quicksand,” because the department “would retain the right to change the underlying bases for the bargaining relationship and absolve itself of contract obligations while the unions would be bound.”
Court Decision Could Affect 750,000 Defense Department Workers
The decision also could affect the 750,000 workers in the Defense Department’s new National Security Personnel System (NSPS), which is patterned closely after the personnel system the Bush administration imposed on the DHS workers Jan. 26.
“This is a truly astronomical win, as the case most probably will set the precedent for the Department of Defense’s NSPS regulations and for the administration’s Make America Work program, which would extend the regulations to other government agencies,” says AFGE President John Gage.
AFGE made every effort to design a fair and efficient personnel system in collaboration with DHS, Gage says. “Unfortunately, our efforts and concerns virtually were ignored, which left us with no choice but to file suit.”
Judge Collyer: A Contract ‘Not Mutually Binding’ is Not a Contract
The DHS rules also would allow the Homeland Security secretary to eliminate any provision in a collective bargaining agreement by issuing a departmentwide directive.
Collyer said a system that allows “the unilateral repudiation of agreements by one party” is not collective bargaining. “A contract that is not mutually binding is not a contract,” she wrote.
The Bush administration is expected to appeal the decision.
