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Washington, D.C.—The head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today sharply criticized a proposal by the administration that it extend throughout the federal government new personnel regulations announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). NTEU is planning on filing a federal court suit challenging the legality of the DHS regulations and seeking to prevent their implementation.

“The DHS regulations are an assault on the workplace rights of the men and women charged with guarding our nation’s borders,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “NTEU will strongly oppose any efforts to extend similar regulations throughout the government,” she added.

President Kelley made her remarks in the wake of statements by the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that the administration has plans, within a month, to begin pursuing legislation that would grant all government agencies similar personnel authority to rewrite civil service rules.

A key aspect of the planned suit is that the regulations far exceed the statutory authority granted the agency by Congress in the Homeland Security Act (HSA).

Rather than ensuring the collective bargaining rights of employees, as called for in HSA, the DHS regulations create a one-sided scheme that strips meaningful collective bargaining and other rights from DHS employees, muffles the voices of front-line workers and irreparably harms the ability of this agency to retain and recruit the high-quality workforce so important to its mission, President Kelley said.

Moreover, the NTEU leader said, Congress approved HSA under the guise that a new human resource system was required for DHS for national security purposes; clearly, she added, that rationale would not apply to the rest of the government.

On a related matter, President Kelley also took issue with OMB’s proposal for creation of Sunset and Results Commissions for government agencies. One party currently controls the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, President Kelley said. “If they want to ‘sunset’ government programs, let them do it through the regular legislative process.”

She called the OMB proposal “a huge power grab from the Legislative Branch to the Executive Branch,” and said that NTEU will work to develop bipartisan opposition in Congress to these proposals.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 15,000 in DHS.