FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—FEBRUARY 27, 2006
Contact Ronald Ault, President
AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept. — Cell Phone (301) 752-1825/ Office (202) 974-8030
Court Finds New DOD Personnel Rules Restrict Collective Bargaining, Violate Due Process; Orders Pentagon to Scrap Those Sections
SAN DIEGO, CA--Federal District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan has permanently enjoined the Department of Defense from implementing three significant sections of its proposed new personnel rules. Sullivan declared that the new rules, which were to have taken effect on Wednesday, March 1, 2006—
- Fail to ensure that employees can bargain collectively;
- Do not meet congressional requirements for independent third party review of labor relations decisions; and
- Set up a process for appealing adverse actions that fails to provide employees with due process and fair treatment as required by statute.
Ronald Ault, president of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department, said Judge Sullivan’s ruling “affirms our position that national security is an excuse, not a reason for setting up a system of command and control which relegates DOD civilians to the status of less than second class citizenship. Judge Sullivan’s ruling ratifies our charges that the National Security Personnel System is an effort to radically undermine the rights of more than 700,000 civilian workers and it is a template for what this White House would like to establish for both private and public sector workers.”
Sullivan said DOD has “eviscerated collective bargaining rights” with regulations that are nearly identical to those initially set up by the Department of Homeland Security. Another judge, Judge Rosemary Collyer, ordered those rules scrapped late last year when she determined that they did not require that both parties live up to the terms of agreements.
Sullivan said DOD’s rules “establish a labor relations system that fails to provide for collective bargaining.”
Sullivan also said DOD’s design of a so-called “independent “National Security Labor Relations Board (NSLRB) is defective because it would both investigate and adjudicate disputes. He questioned the independence of such a board which would be appointed and serve “at the sole and exclusive discretion” of the Defense Secretary. DOD’s set up of the NSLRB “does not satisfy Congress’ requirement for an ‘independent third party’ to review labor-,management disputes,” Sullivan found.
Overall, the regulations fail to provide DOD employees with fair treatment—a key requirement of the statute enacted by Congress in November 2003 when it included the National Security Personnel System as part of that year’s Defense Authorization Bill.
Sullivan said “there is no basis for” authority that DOD wants to assume under the regulations to enable the Secretary to override determinations by the federal Merit System Protection Board (MSPB). “Congress said nothing a out giving the Secretary unreviewable discretion” to alter MSPB determinations in specific cases. Similarly, DOD’s efforts to set up a list of “mandatory removal offenses” under the Secretary’s “sole unreviewable discretion, “as well as its efforts to set standards of behavior for union representatives go beyond the authority given by Congress or contained in statute, Sullivan said.
Sullivan did rule in favor of DOD on two points—dismissing union charges that DOD failed to collaborate in the development of the rules and that Congress did intend to give DOD the right to depart from significant sections of the basic statute governing labor relations in the federal government.
“[W]hile [DOD] may not have met Congress’ requirements with enthusiasm, the Court finds no evidence that the defendants acted in bad faith” and did collaborate, Sullivan wrote, adding: “The Court suspects, however, that more substantive meetings with plaintiffs could have helped defendants void the shortcomings of these regulations in providing for collective bargaining. . .”
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Metal Trades Department, AFL-CiO • 815 16th Street, NW •Washington, DC 20006
Phone: 202-508-3705 • Fax: 202-508-3706 • email: metaltradesweb@gmail.com
