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Washington, D.C.—In mid-week, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers will tell a key House subcommittee that new personnel regulations in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are seriously undermining the morale of DHS employees by taking from them any meaningful way to have their voices heard in the workplace.

And that, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) will tell House members on Wednesday, presents what “should be an unacceptable threat” to the ability of this key department to accomplish its mission of enhancing national security.

Kelley’s assessment of the impact of new DHS regulations on the workforce will be presented at a hearing at 10 a.m., Wednesday, March 2, of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organizations. The hearing will examine the scope and significance of changes from the current personnel system and determine how the new regulations may affect federal employees at DHS. NTEU represents some 15,000 DHS employees in its Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The impact of the new regulations, President Kelley will say, “will be a negative one from the first day.” The regulations, put together by DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), effectively strip from agency employees their long-held rights to bargain collectively, replacing them with what the NTEU leader calls a “one-sided regime” under which the majority of key working conditions aren’t subject to negotiations—even as to the impact and implementation of management-initiated changes in such conditions.

What’s more, Kelley will tell the subcommittee of the widespread concerns expressed throughout the DHS workforce over the loss of meaningful rights to third-party independent decision-making on matters impacting their day-to-day work. Under the new rules, responsibility for those decisions is vested in a DHS-controlled internal relations board.

Kelley will note that NTEU, joined by three other unions, has filed suit in federal court, alleging that DHS and OPM overstepped the authority granted them by Congress in the Homeland Security Act—and she will call on Congress to force substantive changes in the rules.

“Employees cannot be effective if forced to work under this kind of total top-down system, knowing they have no real voice in their work life,” President Kelley said. “For the sake of the nation, this system must be changed.”

She also will urge Congress to adopt a go-slow approach—unlike that of the administration—to any thought of expanding these untested rules throughout the federal government. “That would be a mistake of epic proportions,” she said, emphasizing that NTEU will strongly oppose any such plan.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.