Senior executives oppose labor rights measure in homeland bill

The Senior Executives Association urged the Senate Friday to reject an amendment to legislation creating a Homeland Security Department that would guarantee union rights for employees folded into the new organization.

In a letter to senators, SEA President Carol Bonosaro said the organization, which represents 6,000 career executives at the highest levels of the executive branch, opposed a compromise amendment offered by Sens. John Breaux, D-La., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., last week in an effort to bring the legislation to the floor for a vote.

"This amendment surely would make managing the department more, not less, difficult than managing its 22 constituent agencies currently is," Bonosaro said in a statement released Friday. "It makes little sense to tie the hands of the executives and managers trying to lead the new department to meet its mission efficiently and effectively."

A bill creating the Homeland Security Department passed in the House in July, but Senate lawmakers and the Bush administration have been unable to reach agreement on personnel rules for workers merged into the new department. President Bush has demanded that the new department's secretary be given managerial flexibility on issues such as job assignments, pay rates and union representation.

The Nelson-Breaux-Chafee compromise would allow employees in the new department to retain the right to protest personnel actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board. It would also allow the president to waive union rights via executive order, but only for employees whose primary duties involve terrorism investigations, intelligence or counterintelligence.

The compromise drew approval from the two largest unions representing federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees and National Treasury Employees Union.

But Bonosaro said the compromise amendment is too restrictive.

"The organizational challenges inherent in creating the Department of Homeland Security and the importance of its mission to all Americans necessitate rejecting this ill-advised amendment," she said. SEA offered its own compromise in August, recommending that the homeland security bill include provisions of legislation offered earlier by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, (S. 1603). Voinovich's bill would revise federal rules involving employee recruitment, relocation and retention bonuses, expand criteria for providing employees with academic training and authorize agencies to pay for employee certifications. SEA urged the administration to keep the Senior Executive Service intact in the new department and maintain appeal rights for misconduct cases under the Merit Systems Protection Board. But the bargaining rights included in the Nelson-Breaux-Chafee amendment would "create a union shop in the new department, where the only outside review of personnel decisions would be through union arbitration," Bonosaro wrote. "The result would be that all employees in bargaining units would have to join the union in order to protect their rights," Bonosaro wrote. "Currently less than one-third are now union members and pay dues. This would constitute a windfall to the unions, and make management of the workforce much more difficult then it currently is for agencies who will join the department."