Catherwood LibraryILR School

A sixty-eight word clause buried in the president's thirty-four-page Department of Homeland Security bill is generating much concern among federal employees, their unions and political allies, and is fast shaping up to be the subject of a major battle over the intersection of workers' rights and managerial flexibility. The sentence that is causing this controversy would allow the secretary of homeland security to ignore the civil service protections afford federal employees---including collective bargaining rights, grievance procedures and whistle-blower protections---in the interests of departmental flexibility and fitness. While the president and his allies have defended the provision as a necessary part of doing everything possible to ensure national security, representatives of federal employees say that this is just one more anti-union move by the same anti-union president who banned unions in much of the Justice Department earlier this year (see WIT for Feb. 7, 2002).