Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today said it will demand that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bargain with the union before implementing any portion of its much-maligned personnel regulations.

NTEU received notice last week that DHS intends to implement portions of its proposed personnel regulations dealing with adverse actions, appeals and performance management.

“It is sheer folly for DHS to move ahead on any portion of new personnel regulations without securing meaningful and current input from its own employees,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “DHS management has made a series of poor decisions that have caused morale among its employees to plummet. This will only add to that long list of harmful decisions.”

NTEU is also working with members of Congress to repeal the authority of DHS to make changes to the current personnel system by agency regulation. The union identified this as one of its key legislative priorities for the year.

DHS informed NTEU that it intends to apply, “as soon as practicable,” Subparts D, F and G of final personnel regulations released by the department in February 2005. The portion of that plan that impacted employee collective bargaining—Subpart E—was enjoined as the result of a successful NTEU federal court suit.

Among the many troubling aspects included in these portions of the regulations is language that would:

•

deny employees a reasonable performance improvement period prior to suspension or removal for unacceptable performance;

•

slant the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) process in favor of management and make it almost impossible for MSBP to mitigate unreasonable penalties;

•

and change the procedures for adverse action appeals including shorter deadlines and restrictive discovery rules.

No such system can succeed, Kelley said, without employee support and “that means that any such system must be viewed as fair, credible and transparent.”

“The only clear and effective way forward for this agency, in terms of its personnel policies, is by working with employees and their representatives,” she added. “If the agency will work with us in a good-faith effort, NTEU will work to see that it accomplishes those ends.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 14,000 in DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.