Hollywood, Fla.
Near the turn of the last century, progressive reformers achieved historic victories against the spoils system that had dominated American government for decades. These reformers realized that an experienced, professional and independent civil service was essential to preventing corruption, ending machine politics and saving massive amounts of tax dollars from abuse and waste. Reformers won strong civil service protections that were designed to last through changing administrations and shifting ideologies. Since then, public-sector unions have fought to preserve and strengthen these civil service protections, including the right to union representation through the collective bargaining process.
The Bush Administration has put each of these century-old victories at risk. Federal workers are facing a massive attack on their rights and their jobs—an attack that targets the very notion of an expert and ethical civil service dedicated to promoting the public interest instead of granting political favors. The AFL-CIO is committed to defending our federal workers against these attacks. A responsible, accountable and effective government is in the interest of all workers, and it vitally depends on protecting the rights of public workers and their unions.
After Republican victories last November, the Bush Administration moved quickly to use its newly consolidated power to dismantle protections for federal employees. At the new Department of Homeland Security, signed into law just weeks after the elections, management can now unilaterally impose new pay, performance evaluation and discipline systems, with only a pro forma consultation with representatives of the affected workers. Unions currently represent more than 50,000 workers in the new department, and all 170,000 employees in the department can now be denied their rights to union representation and collective bargaining, even when they are continuing in the same job that has enjoyed union protection for more than 50 years.
After stripping 500 Justice Department employees of their collective bargaining rights last year, the administration has more recently denied collective bargaining rights to more than 56,000 airline security screeners employed by the Transportation Security Administration and more than 1,000 employees at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Notwithstanding these actions, AFGE is continuing to organize the security screeners and is determined to keep up the fight to secure a voice at work for these employees.
The administration claims that maintaining workers’ fundamental rights to union representation is incompatible with the war against terror. The administration’s stance insults every union member on the front lines of the battle for domestic security: fire fighters and rescue workers sacrificing their own lives to save the lives of others; nurses tending to the victims of terrorist attacks; construction workers toiling around the clock to clean up Ground Zero; airline workers giving up their own pay and benefits to enable their companies to survive; postal workers confronting deadly contamination in our mail; and health workers grappling with vaccinations against bioterrorism.
Not only is the administration’s position insulting, it is not supported by the facts. Dismantling workers’ rights will not make our nation more secure. Our security depends on the daily hard work and commitment of government workers, and when those workers have a voice at work through their union, they can be more productive, receive better training and skills enhancement and gain the recognition and rewards they deserve. This makes all of us safer.
The administration’s arguments are further undermined by its apparent zeal to do away with civil service protections in areas that have nothing to do with national security. One example is the recently proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which would deliver billions in long overdue development aid that the trade union movement has been calling for to fight global poverty. Under the administration’s proposal, the MCC management could disregard most civil service rules, limit employment terms to five years and allow private firms to continue paying their own employees as they work at the MCC.
When the Bush Administration is not eliminating civil service protections or busting federal employee unions, it is busy imposing mandatory privatization quotas on federal jobs. Bush’s privatization plan requires federal agencies to privatize at least 850,000 federal jobs. Although the policy claims to promote competition to benefit taxpayers, in fact less than half of these federal employees will have the opportunity to compete in defense of their jobs. The administration has also imposed a radical change in the rules and regulations governing federal government sourcing decisions so that the process of deciding the terms for privatization and contracting out of government work will strongly favor contractors to the detriment of taxpayers and federal employees. In addition, these new rules will create an even greater incentive for government contractors to reduce wages and benefits for those who perform the government’s work.
The broad scope of the new rules is particularly indefensible given current problems with government contracting. The federal government has no system for monitoring either the cost, content or quality of the more than $120 billion in service contracts private corporations receive every year. Considering state and local governments’ ample experience with huge cost overruns, shoddy performance, fraud and abuse in private contacting arrangements, the lack of oversight for federal government contractors should be of major concern to taxpayers and policymakers. Instead, the Bush Administration wants to expand the number of jobs contracted out to the private sector while reducing safeguards for cost saving and quality improvement.
New rules would give away billions more dollars to private contractors whose main motives are profit, not public service. These contractors will depend on gaining the political favor of those in power, rather than the independent protections of civil service rules and union representation, to keep their jobs. The proposal is a recipe for disaster.
The AFL-CIO is dedicated to protecting the rights of government workers. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake. The right of workers to enjoy their fundamental human right to a voice in the workplace is at stake. The quality, efficiency, professionalism and independence of our public service—and billions of taxpayer dollars—are all at stake. For the sake of our public employees and for the sake of all working families, the AFL-CIO will oppose the Bush Administration’s efforts to dismantle the civil service system, privatize up to a million federal jobs and dilute federal employees’ rights to a voice on the job through their union.