Senators, labor leaders press demand for union rights

The battle over union rights for federal employees in the proposed Department of Homeland Security intensified Wednesday as five Senate Democrats joined more than 200 federal union members at a press conference where the group urged the president to "show respect for federal employees."

Bush has asked for managerial flexibility in the proposed agency, which would allow him to waive employees' union rights in the interests of national security. On Tuesday, the White House issued a statement threatening to veto a Senate bill that includes civil service protections and collective bargaining rights for the 170,000 employees who would be shifted to the agency.

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., author of the Senate's homeland security bill (S. 2452), said the legislation provides ample flexibility for the department's leaders.

"Under existing civil service laws, the president has sufficient management flexibility to hire, to fire…to sit down and negotiate entire new work arrangements," Lieberman said. "This bill would give the new secretary of homeland security more management flexibility than any other cabinet member in the history of America."

Lieberman, who was joined by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.; Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; said the president's advisors have steered him in the wrong direction.

"The enemy here is Osama Bin Laden, not Bobby Harnage," Lieberman said, referring to the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employees union.

Last week AFGE released a report outlining more than 80 existing managerial flexibilities under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, including provisions that allow agencies to reassign employees, offer them recruitment and retention bonuses, eliminate jobs through reorganizations and outsourcing and fire employees in their first year on the job without cause.

"When the terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, we responded and deployed without question as soon as we were told to do so," said Denise Dukes, a Federal Emergency Management Agency management analyst who serves as president of AFGE Local 4060. Dukes said union rights didn't prevent her or other federal employees from performing their duties.

"Union members are not an obstacle to homeland security, we are homeland security," Dukes said.

Richard Falkenrath, senior director for policy and plans in the White House Office of Homeland Security, defended the administration's request for managerial flexibility, saying the current civil service system is "too complicated" and cannot meet the government's homeland security needs.

"We take this deadly serious and don't think this [Senate] bill lives up to the awesome responsibility that faces the secretary of the Homeland Security Department," Falkenrath said Wednesday at a Brookings Institution event. He criticized Senate Democrats and unions for making civil service protections a "partisan issue," and emphasized that the administration is not trying to strip employees of their rights.

"The Fair Labor Standards Act, civil rights laws, whistleblower protection rights, veterans' preference…they will still apply to employees in the new department," Falkenrath said.

The Senate voted Tuesday to start debating the homeland security legislation. A vote is expected later this month.