At DHS, the Bush team and unions are actually getting along

A year ago, federal employee unions and the Bush administration were locked in a nasty battle over whether Congress should grant broad power over personnel in the proposed Homeland Security Department to President Bush. On Capitol Hill, Republicans accused Democrats of putting the unions' special interests above national security, while Democrats accused Republicans of exploiting fears about terrorism to bust the unions. From June 2002, when Bush proposed the new department, until November 2002, when Bush signed the new department into law, federal unions and Bush administration officials were bitter enemies. "It was long, bloody and divisive," recalls Jeff Sumberg, a labor relations official at the Office of Personnel Management.

A year later, federal unions and officials at the new Department of Homeland Security are doing a surprising thing: They're getting along. Union leaders are working with officials from Homeland Security and OPM to design a new personnel system for the department. Both sides say the process is working well, at least so far.

"We really couldn't ask for better people to work with at OPM and DHS," American Federation of Government Employees General Counsel Mark Roth said Tuesday at the Excellence in Government conference in Washington. The conference, which ends Wednesday, is sponsored by the Council for Excellence in Government and Government Executive.

Kay Frances Dolan, co-chair of the personnel system design team at DHS, said the process of involving employee representatives is helping to build trust and credibility at the agency. "The ultimate test of a personnel system is, does almost everyone think it's fair?" Dolan said.

"Fair" is not a word union leaders would use to describe the labor relations policies of the Bush administration. Almost immediately after taking office, Bush rescinded an executive order instructing agencies to set up labor-management partnership councils to involve unions early in management decisions. He went on to deny collective bargaining rights to several hundred Justice Department employees. Bush officials have also denied collective bargaining rights to employees at the Transportation Security Administration-which is now part of Homeland Security-and at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Unions, meanwhile, have fought Bush administration efforts to revamp rules governing the civil service. This year, the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, the National Federation of Federal Employees and other unions are battling plans to eliminate statutory civil service rules for employees at the Defense Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.

The legislative battle over the Homeland Security Department last year was particularly heated. Many observers say Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., was defeated for re-election in part because of Republican attacks on him for siding with the unions during the fight. After the election, in which Republicans gained several seats in the Senate, the Republican version of the Homeland Security bill quickly passed and President Bush signed it into law on Nov. 25. The law granted the new department power to redesign rules in six personnel areas: hiring, pay and classification, labor relations, employee discipline, employee appeal rights and employee evaluation systems.

The law said that department officials could come up with personnel rules, issue them in the Federal Register and give unions 30 days to provide comments. In the end, the department could issue whatever rules it wanted. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and OPM Director Kay Coles James decided to involve the unions more closely than the law required.

On the same day Bush signed the law, Ridge and James met with AFGE President Bobby Harnage and NTEU President Colleen Kelley to start coming up with a collaborative process to design the department's personnel system. In April, the Homeland Security Department and OPM set up a design team of 45 management officials, employees-and union representatives-to develop a list of options for personnel reform at the department. AFGE and NTEU have representatives on the design team, as does the National Association of Agriculture Employees, which represents agriculture inspectors.

Dolan and Roth said Tuesday that the design team will complete its work in September, at which time a senior review committee will put together proposals, which will ultimately be approved by Ridge and James.

The design team has been traveling across the country gathering input from Homeland Security employees, reading human resources publications and talking with personnel experts. Union and management representatives are working side-by-side, identifying problems in the department as well as personnel practices that are working. "There's a lot of commitment of time, energy and money," Dolan said.

Roth said department officials have done a good job of including union representatives. Four AFGE employees are on the design team.

The design team will present its list of personnel reform options to a review committee of management and union officials, Dolan said. AFGE President Harnage, NTEU President Kelley and National Association of Agriculture Employees President Michael Randall will represent unions. OPM is represented by Adviser Steven Cohen, Chief Human Capital Officer Doris Hausser, and policy officials Ron Sanders and Marta Brito Perez. Homeland officials on the review committee are Undersecretary for Management Janet Hale, Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy, administration chief Michael Dorsey, immigration chief Eduardo Aguirre and customs chief Robert Bonner.

That group will be advised by a panel of academics and outside management experts: Bernard Rosen and Bob Tobias of American University, Patricia Ingraham of Syracuse University, Maurice McTigue of George Mason University and Pete Smith of the Private Sector Council.

Roth said union officials are still worried that the Bush administration will harm employee rights. "We have fully committed to the design process," Roth said. "But we are also cautious."

Dolan, a veteran of personnel reform efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration and Internal Revenue Service, said the design process is helping build the trust necessary for success. But she is also cautious, noting that many factors could derail employees' acceptance of personnel reform.