EPA's Labor-Management Breakup

The old labor-management partnership councils at federal agencies created under the Clinton adminstration are ghosts of their former selves since President Bush dissolved them in 2001. But now the one at the Environmental Protection Agency is officially out of business, the Washington Post reports today. Unionized scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have severed their official relationship with management, citing concerns that leaders are failing to follow "principles of scientific integrity."

"It's gotten worse than ever in terms of the agency just doing unilateral decision-making," said J. William Hirzy, executive vice president of Chapter 280 of the National Treasury Employees Union and a senior scientist in EPA's risk assessment division. "We're tired of it."