Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The nation’s largest independent union of federal workers has moved quickly in asking a dozen key members of Congress to urge Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Tom Ridge to direct senior DHS managers back to the bargaining table with its largest unions over changes to its personnel system.

Last week, DHS managers terminated discussions on key elements of the new system with representatives of the National Treasury Employees Union (Union) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).

In a letter to a dozen key chairs and ranking members of committees with government oversight and homeland security responsibilities in both the House of Representatives and Senate, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley described the management action as “extreme and unprecedented” and said “it has caused employee morale to plummet.”

She added: “Management’s refusal to continue necessary and productive discussions” serves as “a clear signal to the men and women who work every day protecting our borders that they are neither valued nor respected.”

The NTEU leader warned that “without employee support, a new DHS personnel system will fail”—and noted that “DHS’s action to terminate discussions with the unions will not generate the much-needed employee support.”

President Kelley further emphasized in her letter to the key elected officials that this unilateral termination of meetings by DHS, and its refusal to engage in further discussions, “is contrary to Congress’ intent when it passed the Homeland Security legislation.” NTEU believes that Congress has “a legitimate oversight role” in the establishment of a new personnel system at DHS, she wrote.

The NTEU president underscored the point that the final stages of the talks were occurring with the “personal assistance” of the head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). He had encouraged the parties to focus on the most important disputes between them and attempt to arrange a “package deal” that would resolve these key issues. The unions had put forward such a package proposal, but DHS management hadn’t responded to it before it ended the talks.

“We were well into that effort,” President Kelley wrote, “often working late into the night, with a package deal in sight, when management suddenly and unilaterally decided they were no longer interested in continuing these important discussions.”

She explained to the members of Congress that while the unions approached the talks with legal precedent, hard data “and a deep understanding of what it takes to actually provide homeland security at the borders,” DHS managers, even as they sought massive changes in personnel rules seriously impacting employee rights, failed to provide “even one example of how the current personnel rules are a threat to homeland security.”

In asking these 12 key members of Congress to urge Secretary Ridge to have his senior staff return to the table, Kelley said that if DHS implements the proposed regulations as announced earlier this year, “it will mark a true reversal of employee rights, and limit our members’ ability to substantially contribute to the vital mission of the department.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including about 15,000 in DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who are legacy employees of the U.S. Customs Service.