Order Cut Workers From Bargaining Unit

The president of a large federal employees union says an executive order signed by President Bush cuts about 1,500 employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the Justice Department and other workers in Treasury’s Tax and Trade Bureau from the labor organization’s bargaining unit.

“This outrageous act seeks — without any supportable justification — to strip from these hard-working men and women the collective bargaining rights they have had for more than 30 years,” said Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union.

The order, called “Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program," was signed the day before Thanksgiving and released yesterday. In addition to agencies within Justice and Treasury, components of the Energy, Homeland Security, and Transportation departments also were affected.

The order says the agencies “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”

Kelley vowed to aggressively fight the order. “NTEU will be pursuing all of our options to overturn this anti-union act,” she said.

Mark Roth, general counsel of the American Federation of Goverment Employees, said the executive order will be added to the list of those that organized labor, civil rights groups, and environmental groups want Barack Obama to rescind when he takes office next month.

“It is amazing to us,” Roth said, “that seven years and 11-plus months into this administration, as the door is literally hitting the lame duck on the tail feathers of his rump, he has enough squawk in him to take one last parting shot at federal labor organizations with an anti-union executive order while the economy burns, two wars are ongoing and he is otherwise viewed generally as irrelevant.”

-Joe Davidson

By Terri Rupar  |  December 2, 2008; 3:22 PM ET  | Category:  Unions
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