IBEW Members Face Loss of Protections

Approximately 8,000 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.

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 work force. Defense Secretary Donald 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 earlier this year with federal homeland security workers and now hes gunning for the countrys second-largest federal employer of civilian workers."

Labor unions 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.

Dardanelle, Arkansas, Local 2219 Business Manager Brenda Bishop said her membersfederal hydropower plant operatorsare nervous about the proposed changes. "We fight them every day for rights that we already have," she said. "If they take stuff away, thats really going to hurt us."

The good news from the congressional debate over the Defense Authorization Bill was the defeat of a provision that waived the Made in the USA requirement for defense systems and components. Now, IBEW International Representative 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.

For updates on these and many other legislative issues affecting IBEW members, visit our Congressional Action Center.