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New Report Criticizes Anti-Union Rules
at Department of Defense

September 1, 2009

A report by a Pentagon panel regarding the Department of Defense’s controversial National Security Personnel System confirms many of the criticisms made by the IBEW and other federal unions of the anti-union work rules, but doesn’t go far enough in its recommendations, said IBEW Government Department Director Chico McGill.

“The report echoes many of exact same criticisms we’ve been making since the NSPS was instituted,” McGill said. “But we think it’s time to scrap the whole program, not prolong its life as the report recommends.”

The NSPS was instituted by President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress in 2003 on the advice of the right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The new personnel rules effectively denied basic collective bargaining and civil services rights to some 750,000 Defense Department workers, including some 12,000 IBEW members.   

The new regulations watered down seniority rights by placing all authority regarding pay raises in the exclusive hands of supervisors.

“The program is fundamentally against the whole sprit of civil-service rules, which were supposed to make federal employment regulations fair and transparent,” McGill said.  “It opened things up to favoritism and discrimination.”

In 2008 Congress effectively limited the scope of the program by removing wage grade bargaining unit members from NSPS, including the majority of IBEW members, but many federal workers were concerned that the program’s example might spread to other governmental departments.

The new report published by the Defense Business Board – an independent board that makes recommendations to the Secretary of Defense – found the NSPS lacked transparency when it came to decisions on employee pay and exacerbated tensions between workers and management.   

However, the report fell short of calling for its all-out abolition. In Congress, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) attached an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 that calls for dismantling the program. The bill, which passed the House, is still under discussion in joint committee.

To read the report, click here.

Photo used under a Creative Commons License from user Mindfrieze.