Nelson-Chafee-Breaux
Amendment
to Gramm-Miller Substitute
The
bipartisan Nelson-Chafee-Breaux amendment is a reasonable
compromise solution to two of the most glaring failures of the
Gramm-Miller substitute amendment.
COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING
•
The Gramm-Miller substitute would allow the union
rights of thousands of future employees of the Department of
Homeland Security to be arbitrarily stripped away, even if
they and their agency are doing exactly the same work in the
new Department that they are doing today.
•
This will damage, not advance, national security, by
weakening the workforce responsible for protecting us against
terrorism, in the midst of this urgent and complex merger.
Unionized workers are dedicated public servants whose hard
work keeps the nation safe. Congress ought to be working with
them to make the merger work, not working against them.
•
The
compromise amendment fixes this flaw, while ensuring that the
President and Secretary retain all the authority they need to
manage an effective and responsive Department. Under the
amendment:
The
President can use his existing authority to remove collective
bargaining rights of currently unionized employees en masse,
for entire agencies or subdivisions of the new Department on
national security grounds.
He simply has to determine that the mission and
responsibilities of the agency or subdivision have changed,
and that a majority of the employees in that agency or
subdivision have intelligence, counterintelligence, or
investigative work directly related to terrorism as their main
job duty. This
ensures that workers currently represented by unions whose
jobs remain the same don't suddenly and arbitrarily lose their
union rights upon entering the Department of Homeland
Security.
The Secretary of Homeland Security can remove the
collective bargaining rights of individual employees, using
similar standards.
CIVIL
SERVICE
•
On Civil Service, the Gramm-Miller substitute
would gut many key provisions of civil service law that
protect the new Department from favoritism, politicization,
patronage, and other pernicious influences.
•
Shredding the public accountability of the civil
service law would jeopardize the performance of the new
Department. The Breaux-Nelson-Chafee amendment therefore
retains two key safeguards of civil service law. Under the
amendment:
Employees
of the Department of Homeland Security will retain their right
to due process before the Merit Systems Protection Board when
certain rights are violated:
Whistleblowers
are retaliated against. Without the right to a hearing outside
their agency, the courageous Colleen Rowleys of the new
Department are more likely to become pariahs rather than
heroes, and the public is likely to pay the price;
Employees are subject to other kinds of prohibited
personnel practices, such as political favoritism, nepotism,
or other arbitrary action. The civil service law is designed
to prevent government agencies from being packed with
patronage jobs, and the MSPB gives this protection real
meaning;
Laws protecting veterans' preference in employment are
violated;
Employees are fired or demoted unlawfully.
The
Nelson-Chafee-Breaux amendment prohibits the Administration
from unilaterally rewriting the statute governing collective
bargaining—including the rights and
responsibilities of unions and management. Under
the Gramm-Miller substitute, the Administration would gain the
unilateral right to rewrite these laws.
•
This amendment would enable
the Department of Homeland Security to design and
implement a new personnel management system allowing for new
flexibility in the areas of pay, evaluation and assessment of
performance, and consequences for poor performance.
•
This amendment adopts the precise approach taken
in the IRS personnel management reforms that Republicans have
touted over the course of this debate.
At the IRS, following a private sector model, personnel
flexibilities only go into effect after the agency reaches
agreement with the unions.
Labor and management bargain, and if they have
difficulty reaching agreement, disputes are taken to the
Federal Services Impasses Panel,
which resolves the disagreements. This allows the
development of a flexible personnel system while also ensuring
that employees are on board with the new system.
Prepared by the Governmental Affairs
Committee
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