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Washington, D.C.—The radical changes in personnel rules planned by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) give rise to serious potential for disruption and loss of mission focus at a time when the country can ill-afford such distractions, the head of the union representing more than 15,000 DHS employees told a key House subcommittee this morning.

National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley emphasized to the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization that the DHS regulations “fall short of protecting federal employees’ rights in three key areas”—labor relations and collective bargaining, due process rights and the pay-for-performance system.

The committee is examining the scope and impact of the new regulations.

In her testimony, President Kelley pointed to an NTEU online survey of Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees showing that this group of DHS employees is very much aware of the potential for serious negative impact on them by these new rules. The survey results, she said, show that these employees have very serious concerns about the direction in which DHS is headed. The survey of 300 CBP workers was taken in the wake of final personnel regulations issued by DHS, where NTEU represents more than 15,000 CBP workers.

In the survey, four in five workers said their morale has dropped in the past year; while nearly nine in 10 said they don’t support the proposed new pay system. Nearly 90 percent of employees identified better agency management as the top measure needed to improve homeland security.

“The results of this employee survey,” President Kelley said, “raise serious questions about the impact of these new regulations on the department’s ability to recruit and retain the top-notch personnel necessary to accomplish the critical missions that keep our country safe.”

She said the impact of the new regulations “will be a negative one from the first day,” since they strip from workers their long-held rights to bargain collectively and replace them with what she described as a “one-sided regime” under which the majority of key working conditions aren’t subject to negotiation.

Employees have been critical of the loss not only of substantial collective bargaining and due process rights, but of the failure of the regulations to include any meaningful third-party review of bargaining disputes. They also have expressed their serious concerns about aspects of the regulations that make DHS both the issuer of discipline and the sole judge of the reasonableness of that discipline.

NTEU has sued in federal court, alleging that DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) overstepped the authority granted to them in the Homeland Security Act (HSA). Three other unions representing DHS employees have joined in the suit.

Kelley called on Congress to force a change in the regulations—and to take a go-slow approach to the administration’s push to extend these untested rules throughout the federal government. NTEU has promised to strongly oppose any such effort.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.