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Washington D.C. — Widespread employee dissatisfaction with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) management and leadership “has created a morale problem that affects the security of this nation,” the leader of the union representing thousands of front-line border security employees warned a key House subcommittee today.

“This problem demands the immediate attention not only of DHS, but of Congress and the American people as well,” President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight.

The issue can be seen clearly, Kelley said, in the DHS decision to move ahead with implementation of personnel rules seriously impacting employee rights on adverse actions, appeals and performance management—despite three federal court victories by NTEU enjoining the labor relations segment of the rules. DHS’s stated intention is to implement provisions of the regulations not specifically struck down by the courts.

“The fact that the courts agreed that these regulations lacked basic fairness should have caused DHS to drop these compromised provisions,” President Kelley said.

“These regulations effectively gut employee due process rights, putting in serious jeopardy the agency’s ability to recruit and retain a capable workforce,” she said, offering strong support for H.R. 1648, legislation which would repeal the DHS system in its entirety.

She noted support for a section of H.R. 1648, which, she said, would grant prospective law enforcement officer (LEO) status as of March 2003, but raised concerns that it could have the effect of creating a two-tier system.

Other bipartisan legislation, H.R. 1073, she said, would treat all CBPOs as law enforcement officers for purposes of the grant of long-overdue LEO status, and would include prior service in legacy agencies in the 20-year LEO retirement calculation.

Kelley also addressed a variety of other important concerns at DHS, including a proposed new performance management system that would be more subjective and open to abuse, and issues dealing with the scheduling of employee work shifts.

On the scheduling matter, she said that in the past, employees had input into which employee would work a given shift based on such criteria as seniority, expertise or volunteers. Now, she said, CBP management makes all decisions without any employee input and “without a credible, transparent decision-making process.”

She used the occasion of her subcommittee appearance to reiterate as well NTEU’s long-held and strong support for legislation that would extend collective bargaining rights to employees of the Transportation Security Administration.

The problems she raised, and others similar, helped place DHS at or near the bottom among 36 federal agencies whose employees were surveyed by the Office of Personnel Management on such critical issues as job satisfaction, where DHS ranked 36th; leadership and knowledge management—a 35th place ranking for DHS; results-oriented performance culture—in which DHS was ranked 36th, and talent management—with a 33rd place ranking for DHS. These results, Kelley noted, helped give rise to the subcommittee’s hearing.

Separately, the majority staff of the House Homeland Security Committee issued its annual report card on DHS, giving the agency a grade of “F” on the issue of employee morale. The staff report identifies a variety of reasons for the failing grade, including DHS’s insistence that it implement elements of a discredited personnel system.

President Kelley said the Homeland Security Committee staff document underscores the importance of DHS addressing the bedrock issue of morale. “In seeking to implement regressive personnel rules and in failing to respect employees and listen to their voices,” she said, “DHS runs the very serious risk of not being competitive with other federal agencies and the private sector in attracting and retaining the high-quality employees it needs in a variety of specialties, including law enforcement.”

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