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Washington, D.C.—When it comes to improving homeland security, “the administration wants a blank check, but the nation is better served with checks and balances” as provided in homeland security legislation the Senate is now considering, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees said today. The president wants to eliminate congressionally designed and determined systems “without indicating what would replace them,” President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said. “That represents the antithesis of the beliefs that have, over the past 100 years, developed the most corruption-free civil service in the world.”

In a letter to every senator, President Kelley called for support of S. 2452, the Senate version of homeland security legislation, and criticized the impact of administration proposals for a new Department of Homeland Security. She has been a leader in the fight to retain civil service and collective bargaining rights for the tens of thousands of federal employees from 22 agencies who would make up the new department.

S. 2452 is sponsored by Sen. Joseph Leiberman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and is in stark contrast to the House-passed version of homeland security legislation which would put at risk the rights of federal employees, Kelley said.

House-passed legislation would allow the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to unilaterally determine the parameters and applicability of fundamental rights that have been set by congressional action for decades, including the federal pay system, due process procedures and labor-management relations, Kelley said.

While the bill crafted by a Republican-dominated House Select Committee purports to maintain the right to be in a union, the NTEU leader said, it allows these two political appointees to waive Chapter 71 of Title 5 of the U.S. Code, “the entire body of law on federal labor-management relations.”

In her letter to senators, President Kelley noted that S. 2452 includes key provisions of legislation advanced by Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), known as the Federal Workforce Improvement Act, that would allow for a more streamlined and efficient hiring system; establish a human capital officer position at every agency; provide permanent extension of such workforce-shaping tools as buyouts and early retirement and take other steps sought by the administration.

“This legislation provides for an array of government-wide personnel flexibilities and permanent management tools,” Kelley said, including direct hire authority, categorical or much less restrictive hiring rules and more. “We can put these new rules in place without taking away fundamental freedoms from front-line employees who work every day to protect Americans,” President Kelley said.

NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 26 agencies and departments, including some 12,000 in the Customs Service who would become part of the new homeland security department.