Lieberman Rallies For
Worker Protections
in New Department of Homeland Security
“The
American Label”
September 4, 2002
WASHINGTON
- Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.,
Wednesday asserted the value of maintaining worker protections
in a new Department of Homeland Security and said the
administration will have all the management authority it needs
to run an efficient, performance-driven department.
Standing
with over 100 unionized public servants, including New York
Fire Department Battalion Chief Michael Telesca and Federal
Emergency Management Agency Analyst Denise Dukes, Lieberman
dismissed President Bush’s implication that a strong
domestic defense agency is incompatible with maintaining the
collective bargaining rights of 43,000 employees who would be
transferred into the new department.
“These
employees may be represented by a union,” he said, “but
the only label they wear is American.”
Lieberman
called it “bizarre” that the president has boiled down a
“critical and common mission” to protect Americans from
terrorist attack to an argument over labor issues.
“The
White House seems to have lost its focus by indulging in a
partisan sideshow only peripherally related to homeland
security,” Lieberman said.
“The problem here isn’t union rights.
The problem is porous borders, and the failure to share
information among intelligence agencies.”
The
bill approved by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and
now being debated on the Senate floor would safeguard
America’s borders and critical infrastructure, connect the
intelligence dots, improve immigration security, leverage
technological capabilities, and prepare for and respond to
emergencies.
Lieberman
said the bill gives the new department secretary more
flexibility to run an efficient, effective, and
performance-driven department than the law now provides
because:
•
The homeland security legislation includes
bipartisan reforms to the civil service law - reforms the
president has requested in his 2003 budget - that give the
secretary new management tools to hire employees, reward
excellence, and reshape the workforce.
•
With the powers in existing law and new ones
added, the administration will be able to swiftly hire,
transfer, discipline, and fire.
It may even remove employees from unions
when national security is at stake - if the
administration states clear reasons for taking such
extraordinary action.
•
Down the road, if more reforms are needed, the
legislation specifically requires the administration to submit
them no later than six, 12, and 18 months after the law takes
effect.
“I resist the president’s attempt,” Lieberman
said, “to circumvent constitutional checks and balances in
order to obtain radical, sweeping new authorities to
consolidate, dissolve, hire and fire with no regard for
Congress’ statutory role, much less the morale and historic
protections of public employees.” |