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IBEW Members Face Loss of Protections

June 5, 2003

Approximately 10,000 IBEW members are among the 750,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian workers who could be affected if proposed legislation removing civil service protections and collective bargaining rights passes Congress.

House of Representatives and Senate negotiators will come together, possibly as early as June, to reconcile companion bills that authorize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to restructure personnel rules and spend $400 billion on national security.

IBEW members working in government shipbuilding and power marketing could be victims of this latest attempt by the Bush administration to erode longstanding job protections of the federal workforce. Rumsfeld argues that in the name of national security, it is necessary to have wide latitude on hiring, firing, pay promotion and labor disputes.

"Whenever President Bush invokes the words national security, people lose their hard-won civil service protections," said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill. "He did it last year with federal homeland security workers and now hes gunning for the countrys second-largest federal agency. And rest assured, he wont be satisfied until every last federal worker loses his collective bargaining rights."

Labor unions, including the IBEW and the American Federation of Government Employees, have mounted a massive protest against the proposal, which would allow the Pentagon to rewrite personnel rules without involvement by the Office of Personnel Management. It discards traditional salary scales in favor of a performance-based pay system. The AFGE also says the plan would allow the Pentagon to avoid paying overtime and comp time.

"Rushing this legislation through Congress and giving the department carte blanche to do as it wishes without regard for its workforce or the public will not make our nation safer," said AFGE President Bobby Harnage

The Senate Government Reform Committee, chaired by Susan Collins (R-Maine), will have a hearing on the proposal June 4 in which Harnage is scheduled to testify.

The good news from the congressional debate over the Defense Authorization is supporters were able to alter a key provision in the bill that waived the Made in the USA requirement for defense systems and components. Now IBEW lobbyist Bruce Burton said, the 21 countries that had been given special status to manufacture defense goods for the United States has been lowered to six. "Were sitting better than we were before," Burton said.

Domestic Insecurity... June 2003 Journal

Bush Proposes Changing Federal Overtime Rules...April 2, 2003

Overtime Pay...U.S. Department of Labor

The Dark Side of Wal-Mart...April 2003 Journal