DHS Signals Intent to Move on Personnel Changes

Just weeks after announcing that it was renaming and scaling back its personnel reform program in favor of a pilot project involving only intelligence employees, DHS has notified unions that it plans to apply the labor relations, adverse action and appeal rights provisions of the system to bargaining unit employees “as soon as practicable consistent with law, rules, regulations and applicable bargaining agreements and obligations.” Until now, the system formerly—and still commonly—known as MaxHR had been applied only to certain managerial and supervisory employees, and at that only the performance management provisions. Unions representing DHS employees denounced the announcement and said they would insist on bargaining over any such changes.