FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, January 18, 2008
Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) released the following statement regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s recent court filing recognizing that Congress has prohibited it from imposing an unfair personnel system on the Department’s employees. The system, known as the Human Capital Operational Plan (HCOP), was previously known as MaxHR.
“From the beginning, I have opposed the Department’s efforts to treat their employees like second-class citizens. This past year Congress finally acted, and I’m glad that the Department has accepted this. The hardworking employees of the Department – who are on the front lines defending our country every day – deserve the same pay, protections, and benefits as the rest of the federal workforce. I will be monitoring this development closely to ensure that the Department completely abandons these plans, because we have heard this before – ‘MaxHR’ was supposedly ‘dead’, only to be repackaged and expanded as ‘HCOP’. We will not allow that to happen again. As the old Russian proverb goes, ‘trust but verify.’”
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Please contact Dena Graziano or Adam Comis at (202) 225-9978.