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Washington D.C. — Approval by the House of the fiscal 2008 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorization bill with provisions repealing the department’s failed personnel management system and granting long-overdue law enforcement officer (LEO) status is a major step forward both for DHS employees and the nation, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today. The measure was passed by a veto-proof margin of 296 to 126.

“The four-year DHS personnel experiment has been a litany of failure,” NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said, “because the law and regulations effectively gut employee due process rights and put in serious jeopardy the agency’s ability to recruit and retain a workforce capable of accomplishing its critical missions.”

H.R. 1684 includes language that repeals the failed DHS human resource management system established by the Homeland Security Act (HSA) of 2002 and the subsequent regulations issued by DHS.

The House acted despite a statement from the White House that the president would veto the measure if the provision repealing the personnel regulations is included in the final bill. “This veto threat shows that this administration is willing to put its animosity toward fair treatment for workers over the interest of national security,” President Kelley said.

While Congress, in HSA, gave the new department broad discretion to create new personnel rules it also made clear that DHS employees were to be treated fairly and continue to be able to organize and bargain collectively. When it became clear that the DHS proposal would infringe on employee rights, NTEU filed suit and won a court order blocking implementation.

“The regulations DHS came up with did not even comply with basic congressional requirements, and subsequent court rulings confirmed this truth,” President Kelley said. DHS subsequently said in late March, however, it intends to implement portions of the compromised regulations that were not explicitly ruled illegal by the courts.

“That makes it clear that DHS has learned little from these court losses and from repeated employee survey results revealing serious morale problems at the agency,” Kelley said. “It is time to end this flawed personnel experiment—and enactment into law of H.R. 1684 will accomplish this.”

As to the provision extending Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) status to officers in DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), President Kelley welcomed the step forward in the union’s battle to secure that goal. She was critical of the administration’s opposition to granting front-line homeland security officers LEO status.

“CBP Officers are our first line of defense at the border; they are armed and deal with criminal activity on a daily basis. It is ludicrous for the president to say they are not law enforcement officers,” Kelley said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including more than 14,000 in CBP.