by Mike Hall, Jun 28, 2006

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia tossing out Bush administration workplace rules for 160,000 Department of Homeland Security workers is the second blow in a week against the Bush administration’s attack on the workplace rights of federal workers.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to ban the Department of Defense from implementing similar workplace rules that gut collective bargaining and civil service rights for more than 700,000 workers.

(Yesterday, a three-judge federal appeals panel said the new personnel system “does not even give the illusion of collective bargaining,” and that parts of it “are simply bizarre.”)

In 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to radically revamp federal personnel rules for the entire government. The Homeland Security and Defense departments’ rules are considered the Bush models for the entire government.

The appeals court wrote that the new Homeland Security personnel system the Bush administration unilaterally imposed on the workers last year:

Not only defies the well-understood meaning of collective bargaining, it also defies common sense.

The Homeland Security rules would replace civil service pay grades and promotion rules and limit the issues that can be discussed in contract bargaining by taking pay and work rules off the table. The court said: 

The obvious problem is that very few of “conditions of employment” are subject to meaningful bargaining and the very conditions over which the parties may negotiate may be unilaterally abrogated by management, a system of this sort does not even give the illusion of collective bargaining.    AFGE General Counsel Mark Roth says the ruling:

AFGE General Counsel Mark Roth says the ruling:

Validates the right of federal employees to have a voice over their working conditions. This is a tremendous win and gives us momentum for honest and meaningful discussions with the administration.

AFGE and other unions filed a suit challenging the rules and last August U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Rosemary M. Collyer issued an injunction against the implementation of the workplace rules saying:    

The regulations fail in their obligation to ensure collective bargaining rights to DHS employees.

The Bush administration appealed Collyer’s decision, which lead to yesterday’s ruling, and could further appeal the case to the full D.C. Circuit Court or U.S. Supreme Court.

The Department of Defense National Security Personnel System also is before the appeals court. In February, a federal judge ruled in a suit by the United DoD Workers Coalition (the more than 30 unions that represent Defense Department workers) that the personnel system “fails to ensure even minimal collective bargaining rights” and blocked the department from imposing the new rules. The Defense Department has appealed the ruling.    

The House action last week on the Defense appropriations bill bans the department from using any funds to move forward with the new rules, but it still must win Senate approval and survive a House and Senate conference where the Bush White House is expected to strong-arm lawmakers to strip it from the bill.

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