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Washington, D.C.— While the U.S. Customs Service admits it is 4,700 personal radiation detectors short of what is needed for front-line employees, President Bush continues to erroneously claim that the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has or would block their distribution and use, said NTEU National President Colleen M. Kelley.

“President Bush has gone from a false allegation that NTEU blocked the usage of radiation detectors, which was disproved by the facts, to now claiming that NTEU could block the use of the detectors if it chose to do so. This is absurd. NTEU has not delayed the distribution or use of the detectors,” said Kelley.

Appearing before a group of Hispanic leaders today, Bush said he needed unchecked authority in homeland security legislation to decide who should or should not belong to a union, claiming that under “rules that some Senators support, the union that represents Customs would be able to say, you can’t do that, that must be voluntary.”

“This is just not true,” said Kelley. “The president continues to claim that union membership will prevent managers from acting in order to protect national security in an emergency. Under current law,

collective bargaining cannot affect the authority of management ‘to take whatever actions may be necessary to carry out the agency mission during emergencies.’”

Kelley said she did agree with President Bush’s statement today that the morale of border security personnel is going to be important in the new department. However, she said, the threat of losing long-held rights, including the right to belong to a union, does little to boost morale.

“There needs to be some assurance to these workers that they will not be stripped of their longstanding rights. They are doing the same work they did long before Sept. 11. The same work should equal the same rights,” said Kelley.

NTEU continues to support the compromise amendment offered by Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.) and John Breaux (La.) and Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), which retains the presidential authority to exclude employees from collective bargaining whose primary duties include intelligence, counterintelligence, or investigative work directly related to terrorism investigations.

“This is a reasonable alternative to unfettered power to strip employees of long-held rights whose jobs remain unchanged in the new department. The same work should equal the same rights. The president said he supports the idea of collective bargaining. He can demonstrate it by creating a homeland security department that maintains the rights of current unionized workers,” said Kelley.