NATIONAL SECURITY PERSONNEL SYSTEM REGULATIONS

From Senator INOUYE

Mr. President, I am very disappointed with the U.S. Department of Defense and Office of Personnel Management’s final regulations for the National Security Personnel System, NSPS, that will affect more than 350,000 defense civil service employees throughout our Nation.

What makes the new system dangerous is that upon a cursory glance, it would almost appear ‘‘acceptable’’ in the name of national security. Scratch the surface, however, and it becomes very alarming.

The rhetoric does not match reality. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in public testimony stated that these new regulations ‘‘would not end collective bargaining,’’ but, rather, would ‘‘bring collective bargaining to the national level’’ to avoid duplication and inefficiency.

This has not occurred, nor do I believe there is a sincere interest in the Pentagon to pursue national collective bargaining. In fact, I would suspect that the Pentagon’s plan is just the opposite—to substantially remove from the table the number of subjects for good faith collective bargaining.

For this reason, I am pleased that the employee unions have gone to Federalcourt to challenge the regulations, in the same fashion that they challenged the Department of Homeland Security regulations.

I hope they will prevail in their call for injunctive relief, as they did in the Homeland Security case, as well as to prevail in the final disposition of both cases.

While I would be the first to say that the Federal civil service system is not perfect, it is a system that has withstood the test of time as fair and impartial.

To overhaul it in favor of vesting the subjective power to hire, fire, discipline and promote in the hands of a few political appointees is very dangerous.

At this point, the ‘‘seemingly acceptable’’ national security rationale for the wholesale stripping of employees’ rights fast begins to lose its luster. It is no longer reasonable.

There seems to me to be an inherent conflict. In the name of national security, this administration is willing to deny its own workers a small modicum of security employment and family security—especially when I do not believe it is necessary to achieve our goal of national security.

I call into question the motivations behind their actions. My position on the Pentagon’s issuance of the NSPS regulations is what I believe any decent fellow would say: Now is the time for our Nation to come together in support of our armed services abroad.

To do so, we must stand behind our civilian defense workforce from whom we are demanding great productivity in support of our troops. Now is not the time to be divisive and punitive of our Federal workforce.

It creates low morale, mistrust, and a decreasing level of respect between worker and management. The consequences stemming from such instability, could be dire.

For me, the stakes in terms of human lives are too high to be taking such a gamble. United we stand—civilian and military together. Divided we could fail.