|
Workers rights homeland { July 26 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64832-2002Jul25.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64832-2002Jul25.html
Worker Rights Battle Snags Homeland Bill
By Bill Miller and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 26, 2002; Page A01
The White House threatened yesterday to veto legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security if it does not include language limiting the workplace rights of the proposed agency's 170,000 employees.
Hours after the White House's warning, a Senate committee crafted a homeland security bill that rejected President Bush's request for unprecedented freedom to hire, fire and discipline employees, setting the stage for a contentious vote in the full Senate next week.
The House, meanwhile, began debate on its version of homeland security legislation, which contains most of the workforce provisions sought by the president. A vote on the bill is scheduled for today.
In the seven weeks since Bush proposed merging all or part of 22 agencies into a Department of Homeland Security, Republicans and Democrats have largely supported the plan, which would be the largest reorganization of the federal bureaucracy in more than 50 years.
But there has been a great deal of disagreement about personnel issues, and yesterday's developments demonstrated how volatile that topic has become.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush has "serious reservations" about the direction the homeland security package took in the Democratic-led Senate, where the Governmental Affairs Committee moved to preserve employees' civil service and union protections. The committee also moved to require that the job of the president's homeland security adviser -- Tom Ridge's post -- become a Senate-confirmed position.
"The president remains hopeful and optimistic that these provisions can be fixed without a veto," Fleischer told reporters aboard Air Force One. "But he does feel strongly about it. . . . He will receive a recommendation from his advisers to veto this if the president's concerns are not addressed."
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), the Governmental Affairs Committee chairman, expressed surprise at Fleischer's remarks and predicted Bush will back down. Both houses are racing to approve legislation by the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and Fleischer's comments came at a critical point in the process.
"I can't believe the president would veto the bill over personnel rules," said Lieberman, who maintained that the changes sought by Bush are unnecessary to establishing the department. "It just doesn't make sense."
Bush hasn't publicly labeled the issue a deal-breaker. But he and Ridge have been pressing the issue in a series of recent meetings with Democrats and Republicans.
Ridge contends that the new department must be able to build and deploy its workforce in a way that can swiftly respond to ever-changing terrorist threats.
Hoping to allay employee concerns, Ridge and other administration officials have said that workers would keep their civil service rights, benefits and union membership for at least a year while a transition takes place. Basic protections would always be preserved, they said, including civil rights, equal employment opportunity guarantees and whistle-blower protections.
But after the transition period, the department's head, working with the Office of Personnel Management, would be able to initiate adjustments that would make it easier to reward, move, cross-train and discipline employees.
In the House, Democrats and some Republicans, including Constance A. Morella (R-Md.), are still trying to secure approval for a proposal that would largely continue the status quo. However, their efforts were rebuffed by a special House committee last week.
Otherwise, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee gave Bush much of what he wanted in the bill it designed yesterday. Members agreed the new department should be composed of the same agencies contained in the president's proposal, including the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Transportation Security Administration.
But in two days of debate, the 17-member committee was sharply divided on the personnel matters before the Democratic majority prevailed. The committee's version of the bill was a victory for unions, which have been lobbying heavily in recent weeks.
Besides protecting civil service rights, the panel voted to restrict the president's ability to remove employees from collective bargaining units for national security reasons. Employees coming into the department could be removed from unions only if the Federal Labor Relations Authority finds that their duties change substantially and involve national security activities related to terrorism investigations.
The committee left open the possibility of some work rule changes, giving the new department's secretary the opportunity to seek them from Congress after six months.
Republicans on the panel said Bush would have even less authority than he does now to take employees out of unions for national security reasons. "We're creating more responsibilities and providing fewer tools to deal with those responsibilities, and that's a recipe for failure," said Sen. Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.), the committee's ranking Republican. Thompson said the White House might be better off without a new department than it would be getting one that it couldn't properly manage.
Fleischer said a department grappling with terrorism needs greater freedoms to give deserving workers timely pay raises and to take steps against those who don't measure up.
"If a Border Patrol agent, under the way the Senate bill is written, is found to be intoxicated on the job and lets a potential terrorist into the country, he or she can't be fired without a written 30-day notice and must be paid during that notice period," Fleischer said.
Staff writer Stephen Barr contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
|
|
