INS unions lobby to keep their rights under proposed agency

The National Border Patrol Council and the National Immigration and Naturalization Service Council, the two largest unions at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have both launched lobbying campaigns to ensure that INS employees retain the right to unionize even if they are placed under the rubric of a proposed homeland defense agency. Several union officials interviewed by GovExec.com said they fear that President Bush could issue an executive order stripping INS employees of their collective bargaining rights if Bush determines that border control and immigration enforcement are national security matters. The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act also gives individual agency heads the right to dissolve unions for national security reasons. "It's a huge concern right now," said Jerome Pawluck, a Border Patrol union vice president based in Montana. "We're asking the rank-and-file to contact their members of Congress by letter or e-mail." The union is also working with Alexandria, Va., lobbyist Eric Shulman, and has hired a Washington law firm to analyze how the unions could block any dissolution plan. National Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner has also come to Washington from California to lobby this week. "We would be seeking language in some piece of legislation that will protect the unions," said a union employee who requested anonymity. "We've asked the lawyers to determine what language-if any-can trump the national security language in the Civil Service Reform Act." Dissolving a federal agency union for national security reasons would not be without precedent. In 1986, President Reagan issued an executive order that dissolved the collective bargaining rights of some employees of the U.S. Marshals Service. And employees of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and Secret Service do not have unions. The INS unions fear that Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, are planning legislation that would merge the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs Service and Border Patrol under one homeland defense agency. The unions prefer the plan proposed by President Bush, which would require any government agency that deals with terrorism to coordinate its efforts with a homeland defense agency, but remain a separate entity. Bush appointed former Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Ridge as head of the White House Office of Homeland Security last month. But Lieberman and Thornberry are leaning towards the super-agency approach recommended in the January 2001 report by the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, a group co-chaired by former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H. Rudman and Hart argue that the Bush proposal, if adopted, would be ineffective in overseeing the government's anti-terrorism programs.