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Washington, D.C.—The leaders of the three largest unions representing employees in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) didn’t mince in any words in their joint comments and recommendations about a proposed new human resources system for DHS.

They said: “We are extremely disappointed by your proposed personnel system. Taken as a whole, the proposed system fails to advance the public’s interest in protecting homeland security…We are compelled to object to the system in its entirety and strongly recommend that it not be implemented until the many serious defects (described in the comments) have been corrected.”

The 85 pages of comments and recommendations for changes were submitted to DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by Presidents Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), John Gage of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and Michael Randall of the National Association of Agriculture Employees (NAAE).

The three union presidents said they expect DHS and OPM to give “full and fair consideration” to their comments, adding that they stand ready, as provided in legislation setting up DHS, “to meet and confer with you in an effort to reach agreement over the many disputed areas.”

In considerable detail, the comments criticize the proposal to grant “broad new authority” to establish a new pay system and determine employees’ base and locality pay, along with annual pay increases, “without requiring any bargaining or even consultation with exclusive representatives.”

The comments also address in detail attacks in the proposed regulations on employee due process and key collective bargaining rights, including proposals that would:

• Eliminate bargaining over procedures and appropriate arrangements for employees adversely affected by the exercise of core operational management rights;

• Eliminate bargaining over otherwise negotiable matters that do not significantly affect a substantial portion of the bargaining unit;

• Eliminate a union’s right to participate in formal discussions between bargaining unit employees and managers;

• Drastically reduce the circumstances during which an employee may request the presence of a union representative during an investigatory examination;

• Severely undercut the fairness of adverse action appeals by employees to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) by letting the agency meet a much lower standard of evidence to prove its case;

• Eliminate the MSPB’s current authority to modify agency-imposed discipline, preventing that body from directing the agency to change unreasonable penalties; and

• Assign authority for resolving many labor-management disputes to the Homeland Security Labor Relations Board, composed exclusively of members appointed by the DHS secretary.

“The apparent design of your plan is to minimize the influence of collective bargaining so as to undermine the statutory right of employees to organize and bargain collectively,” the union presidents said. “When it enacted provisions to protect collective bargaining rights (in DHS),” they added, “Congress could not have intended those rights to be eviscerated in the manner that you propose.”