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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today urged a federal court to reject an effort by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to narrow the court’s injunction preventing the agency from implementing significant portions of its new human resources system, including its entire labor relations scheme.

The Aug. 12 decision by Judge Rosemary Collyer of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia “invalidated more than a dozen separate regulations that are inextricably intertwined with the rest of the regulations,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley.

“The portions of the regulations that the court expressly invalidated were clearly key pillars of the DHS scheme,” she said, adding that “the result of the court’s invalidation of those pillars is that DHS must go back to the drawing board on its entire labor relations system.”

In reconsidering the regulations, the union leader noted that the Homeland Security Act (HSA), which established DHS, would require the agency to collaborate with NTEU and to provide notification to Congress. That process would be required to run at least 60 days.

The NTEU leader made her comments as the union prepared to file legal documents with the court in response to a DHS motion asking Judge Collyer to narrow her Aug. 12 decision. The government itself, President Kelley said, concedes that the Collyer decision invalidates regulations DHS sought to impose that would have allowed the agency to ignore binding collective bargaining agreements; to commandeer the resources of an independent agency, the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), to review labor-management decisions by a proposed internal DHS board; and to adopt a legal standard that would make it virtually impossible for employees to obtain penalty mitigation from the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).

The NTEU suit against the DHS regulations which gave rise to Judge Collyer’s initial decision charged that DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) far overstepped the authority given to them by Congress in HSA.

The result of the proposed regulations, Kelley said, would be to create an unfair and unjust system that needlessly attacks and undermines the rights of front-line workers in the war against terrorism, to the detriment of the department.

“With its severe impact on morale, as well as on recruitment and retention, the labor relations scheme sought to be imposed on employees and their union by DHS would truly be a step backward in helping secure our nation,” she said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including about 14,000 in DHS.

To download NTEU's legal filing, visit http://cbpunion.org/Documents/nteu.mot.pdf.