Government Employees — 6

Next, he prohibited the screeners at the Transportation Security Agency to organize or collectively bargain. And if that wasn’t enough, the administration determined that in order for the new Department of Homeland Security to be effective they too must be given broad latitude to make changes to personnel systems. After months of debate, Congress granted permission for sweeping change.

The final version of the new personnel system was not available at the time this report was submitted but will no doubt include restricted, collective bargaining and organizing rights and a new pay and promotion system that can be easily manipulated by management.

Even before the ink was dry on the Homeland Security legislation, the Secretary of Defense asked Congress to overhaul the personnel system for the Department of Defense. The “Transformation for the 21st Century Act” as it was called would re-write the rules for more than 620,000 defense department civilian employees. The changes would radically revamp union rights, procurement policy and environmental issues again all under the pretext of “National Security.”

The proposal included, limited collective bargaining and appeals processes, the dismantling of the personnel system as it is known under Title 5 to include pay and promotion revisions and hiring and reduction in force provisions.

All in all, the Secretary’s proposal would allow the DoD to waive twelve chapters of Title 5. While a strong grassroots effort fell short of defeating the proposal, Congress granted the DoD much of what it wanted and failed to maintain jurisdiction over areas of contention until the DoD provided it’s final proposal.

This is an area that the IAM will continue to follow closely because of the ramifications these new personnel systems can have on the rest of the federal sector. In the long run, the Bush administration would like to continue to take apart the unions in the federal sector and then use it as the launching pad to go after the unions in the private sector.

Membership and Organizing

Privatization and retirements still plague growth in the Federal Sector. A sanctioned raid and reorganizations have also taken their tolls on membership. As the federal sector continues to privatize government services, our bargaining units continue to decline. If the federal sector is not privatizing, they are continually reorganizing and consolidating units.

For example, at the time this report was prepared, Federal District 1 was going through an election with AFGE and NAGE for nearly 10,000 bargaining unit members of the Defense Contract and Management Agency. At stake are 1,000 IAM bargaining unit members. The IAM will be faced with more of these consolidations as government continues to reinvent itself and/or downsize.

Further, in a sanctioned raid in 2001, AFGE raided Federal District 1’s VA locals and, of the 13,000 members at stake, AFGE was able strip away 9,000 non-professionals. FD 1 held on to 4,000 professional employees during that raid.

And yet, with the IAM still representing more than 90,000 bargaining unit members and less than 20 percent union density, there is still room for substantial growth. Even facing the adversities mentioned earlier, there was an increase in membership in the federal sector.

Training

A priority was placed on developing new training programs for the federal sector. Since the last Grand Lodge Convention several new programs have been developed with the help of the WWW Education and Technology Center. Leadership I and II courses have been offered exclusively for federal employees. A Federal Sector Collective Bargaining class is now part of the course curriculum at the Center.

Additionally, the Federal Employee Seminar has been totally revamped to provide participants the tools they need to represent their locals in all aspects of union membership. In the last three years, nearly 300 IAM members from the federal sector have attended more than 500 classes at the Winpisinger Education and Technology Center.

Summary

The Federal Sector has faced many adversities since the beginning of the Bush administration and has been able to weather the onslaught. The Federal Sector will remain focused on political and legislative action, servicing, organizing and training. The 2004 Presidential election looms large for the federal and private sectors of the IAM alike. Another four years of the Bush administration could mean irreparable harm to all in our great union.