Federal unions in Bush's sight
WASHINGTON (PAI) - President George W. Bush wants to extend his anti-worker, anti-union personnel plan to virtually every one of the federal government's two million workers, two top American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) officials say.

On Oct. 7, a federal judge, for the second time in two months, threw out Bush's plan, which would throw unions out of the 125,000-worker Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and impose rules that would let supervisors unilaterally cut pay and fire workers.

In a communication sent to AFGE members, union General Counsel Mark Roth and Assistant General Counsel Ward Morrow describe Bush's proposed "Work for America Act," which, they note, has yet to garner any congressional sponsors.

"In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, where the merit system employees and their union leaders documented ineffective high-level management and bureaucratic structural problems, apparently the same folks who brought you a weakened Federal Emergency Management Administration now want to extend the system they are creating at DHS to the rest of the federal workforce," they wrote.

They pledged federal worker unions will fight Bush's bill. While Bush justified his DHS rules with "national security," there is no such excuse for the rest of government, they added.

"It is an outright anti-union, anti-employee piece of legislation. The DHS and DOD plans were pitched to support national security, this follow up has no such justification. It is a power grab pure and simple," they said.

The DHS system has been halted in its tracks by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, who was a Reagan administration NLRB official before becoming a judge.

Instead, Collyer again agreed with AFGE and four other federal worker unions, who said the Bush rules "essentially would eliminate the collective bargaining process." She urged Bush's DHS to "revisit the personnel system in a renewed rule-making effort" covering employee workplace rights. DHS has yet to respond to the judge.