CQ TODAY – DEFENSE
June 1, 2007 – 7:06 p.m.
Defense Employees’ Rights at the Center of Authorization Dispute
By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff
The fate of the pending fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill and the workplace rights of some 700,000 federal workers rests on the outcome of a clash over Pentagon rules for managing its civilian workforce.
The Bush administration says the Pentagon needs more flexibility in hiring, firing, paying and disciplining its employees during a war than the current civil service system allows. But many members of Congress and unions representing federal workers say the administration’s solution, the new National Security Personnel System, hurts longstanding worker rights.
The resulting conflict in Congress and the courts is a classic confrontation between Democrats who are allied with labor and Republicans who side with management.
A similar standoff also threatens the House-passed fiscal 2008 homeland security authorization bill (
HR 1684), which proposes scrapping the Department of Homeland Security’s personnel system, called MaxHR.
The system, created along with the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 (
PL 107-296), mirrors the military’s new personnel system. Several MaxHR provisions were struck down last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
New ProgramThe Republican-led Congress authorized the new military system in 2003 (
PL 108-136), and the Pentagon published rules implementing it two years later.
Besides new hiring and firing rules, the new personnel system would set up a process for appealing disciplinary decisions. A new review board would resolve labor management disputes.
And the Defense secretary would be able to scrap existing collective bargaining agreements.
In January, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years, they and their union supporters began looking to undo several major parts of the administration proposal.
On May 17, the House passed a defense authorization bill (
HR 1585) that would restore the old personnel rules on three main parts of the system: collective bargaining rights, appraising employees’ performance and appealing disciplinary actions.
The White House replied that the bill would “eviscerate our effort” and called it “a total revocation of the flexibilities Congress granted the department.”
The administration indicated that it would veto a bill containing the provisions.
A week later, the Senate Armed Services Committee took a more surgical approach to cutting up the law. The Senate bill (
S 567) and report, which were to be filed Monday, would bar the Pentagon from limiting the kinds of issues that could be subject to collective bargaining, an aide said. It also would block the Pentagon from being able to override existing bargaining agreements. The Senate also would exclude from the personnel system roughly 150,000 blue-collar workers, or “wage-grade employees.”
The White House has yet to say whether the Senate bill’s proposed revisions to the personnel system also would trigger a veto, but administration officials are going to the ramparts to defend their plan.
Sean Kevelighan, spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, “We hope the Senate is able to learn from the misdirection by the House in this regard and not attempt to restrict this valuable system.”
Rule Changes Needed
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration argued that the rules governing civilian employees at the Defense Department needed to be changed to safeguard national security.
The old rules did not allow enough flexibility in the management of the department’s civilians, officials said, and the existing system rewarded workers for longevity more than for performance.
The system has been phased in slowly and now covers at least 80,000 Defense employees.
Michael Luis Dominguez, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, told a House Armed Services panel in March that the system improves management of personnel without sacrificing worker protections.
“We are already seeing a powerful return on investment,” he said.
But Democrats and unions that represent government employees contend that President Bush used the Sept. 11 crisis as a justification for union-busting.
Democrats fought the bill that created the Homeland Security Department, in part because of its new personnel system, which also restricted collective bargaining. Republicans later used that fight to unseat Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia (1997-2003).
Unions went to court in November 2005 to block the military system. In February 2006, a district court judge ruled several parts of the labor relations plan illegal. But just last month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected the earlier decision.
It is no surprise that the unions back the House approach and not the Senate’s.
Mark Roth, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, said unions are concerned that the Senate left major portions of the administration’s personnel system, such as the “totally unfair” appeals process, intact.
Clashes over the issue are all but inevitable this summer. The first venue for the conflict will be the courts. The unions plan in July to appeal last month’s judicial defeat. The other venue will be the House-Senate conference writing the defense bill.
Whatever the outcome, the personnel system will be improved, said Democrat Solomon P. Ortiz of Texas, who chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.
“I think it will be better than what we had before, even after we conference with the Senate,” Ortiz said.
Source: CQ Today Round-the-clock coverage of news from Capitol Hill.
© 2007 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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