Homeland Security Bill Also Top Priority

Another key piece of business will be a Senate vote on a bill (S-2452) to create a Homeland Security department out of some two dozen current agencies and sub-agencies with about 170,000 employees. The Senate version essentially would leave current employee protections in place and would more severely restrict a President’s authority to revoke union rights in the new agency by allowing a revocation rights only when jobs are significantly changed in the transition and the new duties involve investigation of terrorism. The House-passed bill (HR-5005) would allow the agency, working with the Office of Personnel Management, to design its own personnel system, although merit principles, anti-discrimination law and many other basic employee protections would continue to apply. It would allow union rights to be revoked where the President determines in writing that those rights would have a substantial adverse impact on the department’s ability to protect homeland security. Employee rights–and in particular union rights–have turned out to be one of the major points of contention on the bill so far.