Love's Labor Lost: Union Troubles Stall Homeland Security Department

In democratic governance, grand gestures are often tangled up in smaller disputes. So it is with homeland security. For the past two months, Senate Democrats and Republicans have been wrangling over the amount of power President George W. Bush should have over the hiring, firing, disciplining and transferring of employees within the proposed Department of Homeland Security. Bush wants total control over these matters, citing the need to deal quickly with terrorist threats and ineffective employees. Democrats, drawing on a long-standing tradition of supporting labor unions, say the proposal would deal a blow to collective bargaining power and civil service protections. They want an impartial panel to arbitrate any disputes that may arise between Bush and government employee unions.

The past five weeks have seen five failed attempts to reach an acceptable resolution. In the latest salvo, on Oct. 1, Democrats came up 15 votes short of the 60 votes required to force a vote. The Democrats accuse Republicans of stalling in order to apply political pressure on the president's opponents during the November election campaigns, and to have a better negotiating hand after the elections — assuming the GOP regains the Senate majority. Not to be outdone, the Republicans accuse Democrats of hampering anti-terrorist efforts. On Oct. 3, Bush renewed his accusation that Democrats are denying him "the ability to protect our national security," charges that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle previously called "outrageous."

With political rhetoric heating up on both sides, the dispute has reached an impasse that may not be resolved until next year. Republican Sen. Fred Thompson recently said the legislation was "on life support" and promised it would be aborted unless a resolution is reached within the next few days. But Daschle has vowed to continue the debate, even if that means keeping the Senate in session until Thanksgiving.

Both sides have an argument. The president has traditionally held a right to prevent workers from unionizing if their jobs involve some aspect of national security — investigative data gathering, intelligence and counterintelligence. The military, the National Security Agency, the FBI and the CIA are non-unionized. In addition, unions lessen individual responsibility for job performance — the lazy-eyed airport baggage screeners come to mind. At the same time, stripping so many people of the right to unionize seems a bit drastic. The proposed Homeland Security Department will be a conglomerate of 22 government agencies with an employee roster of 170,000 people and an annual budget of $17.5 billion. Some of these people will be engaged in extremely sensitive and dangerous work, but it is hard to believe that preventing office clerks from unionizing will enhance national security. In the Department of Defense, for instance, nearly half the workers are unionized and no one is citing them as a security risk. Additionally, absence of a union does not automatically guarantee more effective workers, as the FBI's recent travails amply show. On the contrary, a job that lacks union security may make employees more risk-averse in taking decisive measures and less likely to expose incompetent superiors for fear of retribution (again, see FBI).

Bush cannot simply expect to receive monarchic powers over so many people in the name of national security. Nor can the unions expect to retain the status quo during the largest government reorganization in 50 years. The issue requires a compromise, not a filibuster. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this debacle is the incessant accusations by both sides of "politicizing" the issue — as if homeland security was above party politics. Protecting the country against terrorist acts is a national issue, but the ways and means of providing that protection is still a partisan one. Hopefully the latter will not overwhelm the former.

By Seva Gunitskiy CDI Research Assistant vgunitskiy@cdi.org

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