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Washington, D.C.—An executive order issued earlier this month exempting certain Department of Justice (DOJ) offices from some rights under the nation’s civil service laws appears to be based on the faulty assumption that unionized federal workers somehow are a barrier to effective national security, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley took sharp issue with President Bush’s order removing from the representation provisions of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act more than 500 DOJ employees on the basis that their inclusion by labor organizations could infringe on national security duties. The order was issued despite the fact that some of these employees have been union members at DOJ for some 20 years and are clerical and other support workers with no access to classified information or any national security responsibilities.

The Civil Service Reform Act established the three-member Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) as an independent body to oversee federal sector labor-management relations. Kelley said both the Act and the FLRA itself set out criteria for bargaining unit inclusion of federal employees that take into account national security needs. “It appears that by his executive order, the president has unilaterally changed these carefully considered criteria,” Kelley said.

The NTEU president said she was extremely disappointed that the executive order “seems to ignore” the commitment to duty and professionalism displayed by government workers—including unionized firefighters, police and emergency medical personnel hailed around the world as heroes—in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

“Everywhere,” she said, “except, apparently, in this administration, there has been a renewed sense of appreciation and respect for federal employees,” particularly after September 11.

There can be little question, the NTEU leader added, that federal employees working together have fulfilled the promise of the Civil Service Reform Act, in which Congress specifically stated that federal sector collective bargaining “safeguards the public interest and contributes to the effective conduct of public business.”

The efforts of government employees working together, she said, “clearly have had positive effects on the government’s ability to deliver services to the American people.”

And the NTEU leader pointed to the statement of a bipartisan group of members of the House of Representatives who said, in a letter about airline security sent last month to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, that the “professionalism and commitment” of a wide range of federal law enforcement and security personnel “occurs because of the existing civil service framework, not in spite of it.”

President Kelley also criticized the executive order affecting the Justice employees as being based on a broad interpreting of exceptions to union representation that had previously been defined only narrowly.

NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.