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Washington D.C.—When it comes to the best places to work among 30 large federal government agencies, as gauged by the employees who work there, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is right where it was last year—next-to-last, in 29th place—and that, said the leader of the union representing thousands of DHS employees, is “a ranking the nation can’t continue to afford.”

In study after study, said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), “DHS gets one wake-up call after another, and yet seems oblivious to the impact on national security and the success of its vital missions from a wide range of problems infecting its workplaces.”

The biennial ‘best places’ rankings were issued today in a joint report by the Partnership for Public Service, an advocacy group that seeks to generate interest in federal service as a career, and American University. The report, which was first issued in 2003, generates scores for agencies based on data from federal employee responses to the Office of Personnel Management’s federal human capital survey.

In addition to its overall ranking of 29th among 30 large agencies, DHS was identified as the lowest-ranked agency in eight out of ten workplace categories. Those categories are employees skills and mission match; leadership; work-life balance; teamwork, pay and benefits, training and development; support for diversity; strategic management; performance-based rewards and advancement; and family-friendly culture and benefits.

“Clearly, this report paints a sorry picture of vitally-important DHS workplaces around the country,” President Kelley said, noting that, according to the report, six DHS subcomponents—including its Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its Transportation Security Administration (TSA)—ranked among the 15 lowest-rated federal subcomponents.

For its part, TSA was the lowest-ranked DHS component on two of three items the Partnership described as “government-wide key drivers”—leadership and work-life balance. The report noted, as well, that the DHS headquarters ranked 215th among the 222 federal subcomponents rated in the study, with a 29 percent decline in its score from the 2005 report. That was the largest single decline of any federal subcomponent, the Partnership said.

In testimony earlier in the day to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight, Partnership President Max Stier said that DHS ‘is fortunate to have a workforce that is committed to the department and its mission.” At the same time, he added, “varying degrees of weakness in all ten workplace categories keep the department and its employees from performing at their best.”

That assessment underscores the position consistently advanced by President Kelley that in both disrespecting and largely ignoring the views of front-line employees, DHS is effectively robbing the American people of the skills, experience and accumulated knowledge of the men and women who work every day at the nation’s more than 300 air, land and seaport points of entry into the U.S.

“The considerable assets and dedication these employees bring to their jobs should be put to work in the service of our country,” the NTEU leader said, “not treated as if they were irrelevant or counter-productive to the agency’s mission.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including 15,000 in CBP.