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Washington, D.C.—The only real way for labor and management to work together over the long term to implement effectively proposed new personnel regulations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is for the regulations to be changed in material ways, the leader of a union representing a large number of DHS employees asserted today.

“I hope that when we look back on this period,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), “these regulations will be seen not as opportunistic grabs for unaccountable control. Rather, I am looking forward to a final version that actually revitalizes government personnel processes in balanced ways.”

President Kelley offered those comments as DHS published its proposed regulations in the Federal Register, beginning a 30-period for formal comments. She said that even as NTEU prepares to submit its comments on the proposals—many of which adversely impact DHS employees in serious ways—NTEU is continuing its discussions with DHS on ways to improve the regulations.

As she did last week when DHS publicly discussed its proposed regulations, Kelley said it is crucial to the success of the homeland security effort for DHS employees and their representatives to be fully engaged in meaningful ways. “These regulations seriously get in the way of that happening,” she said.

President Kelley expressed her concern that the proposed regulations would severely limit collective bargaining, including removing such important matters as deployment of personnel, assignment of work and the use of technology from among the issues subject to bargaining.

Moreover, she criticized the proposal that before other subjects could be addressed in impact and implementation bargaining, they would have to “significantly affect a substantial portion of the bargaining unit,” although no definition of “significantly affect” or “substantial portion” has been provided.

The union leader was particularly troubled, she said, by the DHS proposal to strip away independent review of collective bargaining disputes by replacing the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) with a costly and unnecessary internal DHS board.

And she said NTEU is concerned about giving the DHS secretary unlimited power to designate any number of employee offenses that require mandatory termination of employment without access to any independent review of the charges.

She also questioned the move away from the General Schedule to an unspecified system of “pay banding” that would largely be based on managerial discretion, and “which has yet to be demonstrated as effective anywhere.” In fact, Kelley added, “there is considerable evidence that it is a failure in other federal agencies.”

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