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Washington, D.C. — The overriding impact of personnel rules the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues trying to implement in the face of clear congressional opposition would be to hurt employees—and thus would do serious harm to the agency’s national security mission, the leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has told DHS.

In a letter to the office of the DHS Chief Human Capital Officer, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said the changes in regulations contemplated by the agency “constitute a needless reduction in the ability of employees to protect themselves from unfair treatment in the workplace.”

Separately, the NTEU leader added that with DHS employee morale at “an exceptionally low point, implementing these regressive rules would only make a bad situation much worse. Doing so makes no sense at all.”

Kelley made her assessment to DHS in response to the agency’s proposal to implement certain segments of its regulations dealing with adverse actions, appeals and performance management. As the result of an NTEU suit, federal courts previously enjoined DHS’s implementation of the labor relations portions of the regulations.

In her lengthy letter, President Kelley, who has demanded that DHS bargain with NTEU prior to implementation of any personnel rules, made the union’s position clear. “NTEU remains steadfast in its opposition to these unjustifiable changes to the current personnel system, and urges DHS to abandon” its proposal to implement portions of these misguided rules.

She emphasized that when and if notice of proposed implementation is given to the union, as required by law, “NTEU intends to exercise its right to bargain to the fullest extent of the law, and will expect changes to conditions of employment to be held in abeyance until conclusion of negotiations, including, if necessary, impasse resolution procedures.”

The best case for the agency, its employees and the nation, President Kelley said, would be for DHS to recognize the growing congressional opposition and abandon the proposals.

Only last week, the House Homeland Security Committee adopted an amendment in its markup of the DHS fiscal 2008 authorization bill that would repeal the personnel management flexibilities provided to DHS in the 2002 Homeland Security Act, which created the department. The authorization bill is a blueprint for further congressional action.

NTEU followed that legislative victory by calling on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee to prohibit DHS from spending any money in fiscal 2008 to implement

the rules. NTEU has been successful repeatedly in securing congressional approval to reduce funding for implementation of the personnel system.

The union’s specific comments on the DHS proposal to move ahead took serious issue with a variety of important aspects of the regulations, including the absence of a required performance improvement period; the requirement for a lengthy initial service period prior to adverse action rights becoming available; an unfair penalty mitigation standard; needless mandatory removal offenses; shortened adverse action reply and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) appeal time limits; and an employer-slanted proposal to require summary judgment in MSPB proceedings where no material facts are at issue.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration.