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Washington, D.C.—In a number of critical ways, proposed new personnel regulations issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) effectively gut employee due process rights and put in serious jeopardy the agency’s goal of building a workforce that feels both valued and respected, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers told Congress today.

In comprehensive remarks on the proposed DHS regulations, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) urged Congress to tell DHS in no uncertain terms that its proposals fail to meet either the spirit or the letter of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

The NTEU leader appeared before a joint meeting of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Reorganization and the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Management. She focused her remarks on proposed changes in pay, labor relations and due process rights.

President Kelley provided a detailed analysis of the attacks on employee due process rights contained in the proposed regulations, including the critical elimination of independent third party review of disputes.

Employees would be stripped of their right to ask an impartial arbitrator to consider serious adverse actions taken against them. Further, the current right of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to modify agency-imposed penalties would be eliminated, thus preventing that impartial body from directing the agency to change unreasonable penalties.

Combining that with a lower standard of evidence in MSPB cases, the NTEU president said, raises the question as to “whether the new MSPB procedures will provide employees with meaningful due process.”

She said employees are concerned as well with the proposed loss of their right to have a union representative present during procedures that could lead to disciplinary action.

And the NTEU leader expressed her great concern over the DHS proposal that would allow the department secretary to determine an unlimited number of “deadly sins” that require mandatory termination of employment—also without independent review of the charges.

These proposed DHS ‘deadly sins’ are even more Draconian than those impacting Internal Revenue Service employees, she said, noting that actions affecting IRS employees “are subject to independent review and are set by statute.” She emphasized that President Bush supports repeal of the mandatory termination provision currently in effect at the IRS.

With respect to a DHS proposed but unspecified pay-banding system, President Kelley emphasized that any changes to pay, performance and classification systems “must be justified by mission needs” and designed to minimize burdens on managers, supervisors and employees. NTEU, she said, “does not believe the pay system in the proposed regulations meets these tests.”

She also was critical of proposed changes to the labor relations system that would substantially curtail employee collective bargaining rights even as it seeks to funnel any disputes into the hands of a three-member internal board appointed by the DHS secretary. “A true system of collective bargaining demands an independent third-party determination of disputes,” she said.

To be successful, a new human resources system must be seen as fair, credible and transparent, Kelley said. “By these standards, the proposed regulations will fail.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments, including some 13,000 DHS employees who formerly made up the U.S. Customs Service.