The workers, under threat from ex-Sec. Donald Rumsfeld\'s alleged "National Security Personnel System" (NSPS), strongly defended themselves and the federal law that lets them collectively bargain in a Dec. 11 federal appellate court hearing.

At that session, before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the unions representing the approximately 700,000 workers emphasized that Rumsfeld\'s system would illegally destroy collective bargaining rights.

Rumsfeld, with the backing of President George W. Bush, wanted to impose a new system to give DOD managers virtually unlimited power over the workers, including hiring, firing, whether to give raises, and discipline. His NSPS plan would also dump whistleblower protections and, if workers contest the discipline, send them to a three-member board named by the Defense Secretary.

Rumsfeld\'s NSPS would also give department managers unlimited rights to unilaterally change working conditions and assignments, "limiting the scope of collective bargaining," National Federation of Federal Employees/IAM attorney Susan Grundman said. "But we say the statute doesn\'t allow you to waive collective bargaining," she added in an interview with Press Associates Union News Service.

Bush is using DOD as a test case for the entire government, federal worker unions say. AFGE President Thomas Gage, whose union is among those in the DOD workers unions\' coalition, warns that if Bush succeeds with the feds, he would then try to obliterate collective bargaining for other public and private workers. Even DOD\'s attorney on Dec. 11 called Rumsfeld\'s personnel system "an experiment."

But that Bush threat, either to other federal workers or to workers\' rights in general, did not come up in the court, which concentrated on the laws covering just the civilian defense workers, and whether Rumsfeld followed them or violated them.

"The judges were concentrating on differences between the National Defense Authorization Act" which let Rumsfeld write a new system "and the Homeland Security Act," Grundman said. The workers\' attorneys, including Grundman, told the judges the defense law does not override civil service law, which authorizes collective bargaining.

And the law for DHS sets up a system where Bush\'s agency had to "meet and confer" with AFGE and other unions about changes in working conditions. But DHS\' personnel plan broke the law so flagrantly that both lower court judges and the appellate court ruled against it. That Bush agency decided several weeks ago to give up the fight.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Emmett G. Sullivan ruled against Rumsfeld\'s Defense Department NSPS personnel plan earlier this year, and DOD filed the appeal. "This (system) is so much worse than what they did at DHS," Grundman added. "They can dump any agreement at any time--and that\'s not collective bargaining."

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.