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Fear-Based Government: Bush Attacks Workers’ Freedoms Under National Security Guise |
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Did the Bush administration use the fear generated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to try to win public support for creating a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that demolished long-standing civil service and collective bargaining rights for some 170,000 federal workers?
A new study by the Naval Postgraduate School not only suggests the loud and strident national security rhetoric the Bush administration used to frame the debate won the public’s support, but that senior White House aides hoped the creation of the new department with its so-called “reformed” personnel system would serve as the model for the entire federal workforce.
The new workplace rules the Bush administration has tried to force on workers under the Homeland Security Act would scrap decades of federal civil service laws. The rules would replace civil service pay grades and promotion rules and limit the issues that can be discussed in contract bargaining. Federal courts have blocked many of the new Homeland Security rules along with a similar set of new workplace rules—dubbed the National Security Personnel System—for some 700,000 Defense Department workers.
The Homeland Security and Defense departments’ rules are considered the Bush administration’s pattern for all federal agencies.
The report, Legislating Civil Service Reform: The Homeland Security Act of 2002, examines the legislative and political battles over passage of the act, the impact of the 2002 off-year congressional elections, the secret White House working groups that developed the plan and the impact of the Bush administration’s national security rhetoric.
When the Bush administration took office, it made no secret that it sought to make major changes in the civil service and collective bargaining rules for federal workers. But the report notes that pre-Sept. 11, the Bush administration was calling for “management flexibility” and “management reform”—arguments that hardly resonate with the public.
But when the Bush administration shifted gears after Sept. 11 and claimed its proposed workplace changes in the new Homeland Security were necessary because of national security, that argument resonated with the public.
“The power of the rhetorical framing of the debate” was the key in winning public support and congressional passage of the act, the study concludes.
Ultimately the debate centered on the needs of the “American people” vs. the needs of the “federal worker.” It is our contention that the audiences identified more with the administration’s arguments than with the unions’ arguments within the culture of fear following 9/11.
The report also says that the Homeland Security/national security/patriotism rhetoric used against congressional opponents of the Bush plan played a key role in the Republican takeover of the Senate, where Bush’s plan had stalled. Under a Republican majority, it won approval.
In the post-9/11 policy environment ‘national security’ was a political trump card, even damaging the campaign of an undisputable patriot like Max Cleland.
Cleland, a Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia, is a decorated Vietnam veteran who lost both legs and arm in combat and rebuilt his life, winning the U.S. Senate in 1996. But his Republican opponent painted him soft on national security and questioned his patriotism because of his opposition to the Bush homeland security plan. Cleland lost.
The report also details how the Bush plan was:
drafted in secret by a small staff group in the White House…for the White House staff group that drafted the proposal, the focus was on DHS, with implications for advancing the administration’s management reforms; and perhaps for the most senior White House officials, the objective was to set the course for widespread reform.
There is suggestion of both opportunism and intention on the question of whether [the Homeland Security Act] is the beginning of widespread civil service reform. The question of intention may depend on the level of the policy maker, but in any case, the reform is spreading, albeit with implementation problems.
AFGE and other unions that represent Homeland Security workers have taken the lead in the legal and legislative battles against the department’s workplace rules, and the United DoD Workers Coalition (a group of more than 30 unions that represent Defense Department workers) has spearheaded the fight against the Defense Department’s attacks on worker rights.
The report is available online at the Center for Defense Management Reform at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School.
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