PRESIDENT
HAS FULL AUTHORITY
TO PROTECT NATIONAL SECURITY, LIEBERMAN SAYS
September 26, 2002
WASHINGTON - Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman
Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Thursday called the compromise
language to the homeland security bill on collective
bargaining and civil service protections “reasonable middle
ground” that gives the president the authority he needs to
protect national security.
The Gramm-Miller substitute, on
the other hand, would allow the union rights of thousands of
future employees of the Department of Homeland Security to be
stripped arbitrarily away, he said, even if they are doing
exactly the same work in the new department that they are
currently doing today.
“That is unfair and counter
productive,” Lieberman said.
“It will damage, not advance, national security, by
weakening the workforce that is responsible for protecting us
against terrorism at the worst possible time, in the midst of
this urgent and complex merger.
Homeland security workers are dedicated public servants
whose hard work keeps us safe.
We ought to be working with them to make this merger
work, not working against them.”
Under the compromise language,
drafted by Senators Ben Nelson, D-Neb., John Breaux, D-La.,
and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., the president may use his existing
authority to remove collective bargaining rights of employees
en masse, for entire agencies or subdivisions of the new
department. 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,” Lieberman
said.
Additionally, the secretary of a
Department of Homeland Security may remove the collective
bargaining rights of individual employees, as long as he or
she shows that the primary job duty fo the employee has
changed, and it now consists of intelligence,
counterintelligence, or investigative work directly related to
terrorism.
“We come to the floor and in a
spirit of compromise,” Lieberman said, “to begin to see if
we can find some common ground with the White House.
And there was substantial movement.
We have ended up with a compromise amendment which does
not at all diminish the national security authority of this
president or any future president if it passes.
“Senators Nelson, Chafee, and
Breaux have come up with an amendment that responds to the
concerns expressed by the White House and our colleagues that
the committee’s bill was lessening the national security
powers of the president by subjecting his decision to an
appeal. So we cut
that out. I must
say we’ve been flexible on this side.” |