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Washington D.C.—Rather than wait another six months before informing the court of its plans for its labor relations system, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should just abandon this effort to impose an unnecessary and regressive system on its employees, said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

The DHS filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was the latest development in a lawsuit led, prepared and argued by NTEU concerning whether DHS’s so-called MaxHR regulations ensured employees’ right to bargain collectively.

Following a federal appeals court’s decision to uphold—and broaden—an injunction issued by the district court to block the regulations, the lower court ordered DHS to file a status report addressing its plans to revise or abandon the regulations that had been enjoined.

In the wake of the DHS filing, President Kelley underscored the position NTEU has taken from the time DHS was created—namely that the law creating the agency requires that any new system ensure the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively, and requires that DHS employees receive fair treatment in appeals related to their employment.

“What this agency has tried so far has failed miserably,” the NTEU leader said. “The system that senior leaders at DHS are hung up on simply will not accomplish ends that are good for the

country, much less for its employees. That is why this system needs to be abandoned in its entirety.”

“The current labor relations system provides sufficient managerial flexibility to DHS, as has been proven by the track record of the past five years of departmental operation,” said President Kelley. “Not another cent of taxpayer money should be wasted in devising a new system.”

Thanks to NTEU’s legislative efforts over the past two years, both the House and Senate have cut millions of dollars in funding sought by DHS for implementation of the system—much of it planned to be used to pay private contractors to construct this unnecessary attack on employee rights.

Recently, for example, the House Appropriations Committee provided zero fiscal 2008 funding for implementation of the rules, while giving DHS $3 million for a human capital survey. For its part, the Senate Appropriations Committee reduced DHS personnel system funding to only $5 million for the coming fiscal year. At one point, the administration sought more than $71 million in such funding.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including 21,000 in CBP.