Helen Thomas writes this evening:
Under its new rules, DHS would have the power to set its own standards on how workers are paid, promoted, deployed and disciplined. That leaves little -- if any -- running room for union representatives to negotiate the rights of federal workers.
This is the fault of Congress for giving too much power to an administration that is hardly labor friendly. Proof of that is the Labor Department's change of eligibility rules for overtime, a step that cut the compensation for millions of workers.
The administration contended that the DHS changes would make the federal bureaucracy more flexible in the fight against terrorism and would improve government efficiency. This looks to me like an attempt by the administration to use the threat of terrorism to diminish the role of government unions.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has heard a hollow ring every time the Global War on Terror has been invoked in defense of some decision, whether it be sneak and peak searches, library searches, a national DNA bank, throwing your lighter in a large bin just before getting onto an airplane though keeping your matches is perfectly fine. But is the rest of the country hearing the same thud?
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer -- a Bush appointee -- blocked the new workplace rules, which were to take effect Monday, because, she said, they illegally overrode existing union agreements with DHS workers.
Thank God for that judge. If this were a hockey game, she'd have 180,000 cheering fans right now. But she shouldn't be the only goalie. Helen Thomas is right. Congress is dropping the ball on this one. And I dare say, it might have something to do with the makeup of the Congress. What is the point of a Congress if that Congress surrenders its powers to the will of the Executive Branch? Judge Collyer said:
The changes allow "the unilateral repudiation of agreements by one party," she declared. A "contract that is not mutually binding is not a contract," she said. The DHS program "fails to comply with the direction of Congress to ensure collective bargaining rights."
I would say Congress itself is "failing to comply with the direction of Congress to ensure collective bargaining rights." As Thomas suggests, Congress should pass new legislation that restrains some of the Bush Administrations more aggressive rollbacks. Because they will not stop at DHS.
DHS was only the beginning of the Bush administration's efforts to make end runs around Civil Service, a system that has already been undermined by the widespread hiring of private contractors by government agencies.
The Pentagon has a similar blueprint to weaken the bargaining rights of some 700,000 Defense Department workers. Labor groups have filed challenges to those grand plans.
The Republican Revolution has been successful at demonizing many values of the left, exchanging social wellfare for corporate wellfare, a strict seperation between God and State, banishing effective environmental regulation into the dunes of the past, and all with little compromise to the other side.
Remember, there is no homosexual agenda, no socialist agenda, no trial lawyer agenda, no anti-Christian agenda, no left-wing agenda. There is only one agenda, and it is their's. Their agenda is to turn government services into products, to make you a consumer and a client, rather than a citizen. And with that goes anything that impedes their motivations, a collective bargaining voice, a right to privacy, social security, corporate accountability, and sunshine in the government. And it will be justified under the umbrella of terror threats.
This has got to be wearing thin.
The '06 message should be along the lines of, "Restoring Government". Not integrity to the office, not morality to the office, not accountability to the office, but the Office itself. Because that is really what is at stake here.