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Washington, D.C.—In the wake of a major legal victory by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded to a call from NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley for a meeting which was held this afternoon.

President Kelley, meeting with DHS Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, suggested that the decision offers a key opportunity to reexamine the entire proposed DHS personnel system, including those aspects of it not involved in the court suit.

“I was pleased with the immediate response from DHS and welcomed the opportunity to sit down with Deputy Secretary Jackson,” Kelley said. “He indicated a desire to work with NTEU in the future and listened to my suggestions on how to proceed. NTEU will continue our efforts to achieve a personnel process that helps accomplish the multiple missions of the department while respecting the rights of federal employees.”

The meeting was held in the wake of a federal court decision last Friday that prevented DHS from implementing new personnel regulations on Monday, as it had planned. Immediately following the court decision President Kelley sent a letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff requesting a meeting. During today’s meeting, Kelley asked top DHS leadership to meet with her and rank-and-file DHS employees at an event where workers could express their concerns.

In last week’s court decision, Judge Rosemary Collyer of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the regulations, issued jointly by DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), failed to ensure the collective bargaining rights of DHS employees, as required by Congress in the Homeland Security Act (HSA).

In addition to ruling in NTEU’s favor on the collective bargaining issue, the judge also upheld the union’s challenge to DHS’s efforts to dictate the role of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) in the system. She held that DHS had no authority to direct the operations of an independent federal agency.

Judge Collyer also agreed with NTEU’s argument that DHS had created an unfair regulation severely limiting penalty mitigation standards that apply to DHS employees.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 14,000 in DHS.