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Washington, D.C.—The National Security Labor Relations Board (NSLRB) proposed by the Department of Defense as part of a new personnel system for civilian employees is illegal and violates the congressional mandate that new regulations for DoD workers ensure collective bargaining, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today in an amicus curiae brief filed in a lawsuit challenging the personnel scheme.

“The board envisioned by DoD is essentially identical to the labor relations board dreamt up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its employees,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “Both would effectively insulate management decisions from outside review and both, therefore, are illegal.” The DHS board has been blocked by an injunction NTEU won declaring major aspects of the DHS regulations to be invalid.

NTEU filed its friend-of-the-court brief today with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the same court that recently upheld NTEU’s legal victory in its DHS lawsuit. NTEU’s brief supports a coalition of federal labor unions pursuing a legal challenge to the DoD regulations similar to NTEU’s challenge to the DHS regulations.

Like the DHS labor board, the NSLRB would consist of three or more members chosen solely by the Secretary of Defense. This management-controlled board would investigate, prosecute, adjudicate, and judge all labor-management matters before it, violating a central tenet of collective bargaining—that disputes are handled by an independent, third party. Not only are the NSLRB members appointed and beholden to the Secretary of Defense, and thus not independent, the board members would also essentially be DoD employees, and thus the board does not constitute a third party.

NTEU’s brief rejects arguments made by DoD that purported review of some NSLRB decisions by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) transformed the NSLRB into an independent adjudicator. A similar effort to conscript the FLRA was made in the DHS regulations and rejected by the court, which noted that that DHS did not have the authority to impose duties on the independent FLRA. This court ruling applies equally to the parallel scheme devised by DoD.

“It is very clear that scheme for management control of labor relations at Defense mirrors the discredited DHS scheme,” President Kelley said, “and for these reasons the ruling of the court in NTEU’s case must apply here as well.”

Kelley added: “This administration is trying numerous paths in its efforts to eliminate long-standing employee rights and NTEU will stand up against these efforts in every case.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 14,000 in CBP.