RE: EDITORIAL: HOMELAND UNION BUSTING 
 

The Democratic leaders in Congress have thrown the working class a body
blow by agreeing not to block a Republican bill creating a Homeland
Security Department that would strip 170,000 federal workers of union
rights and/or Civil Service protections. Both houses of Congress are now
expected to quickly approve the bill and send it on to Bush for his
signature. 

The bill would consolidate 22 existing federal agencies and their
employees under the new department in the largest reorganization of the
federal government since World War II. At present, 50,000 of these
workers are in unions, most of them represented by an AFL-CIO affiliate,
the American Federation of Government Employees. The others are covered
by Civil Service rules and regulations. 

The AFGE Web site explains that under the Bush plan, "if a manager
arbitrarily downgrades your position and pay, passes you over for a
promotion you truly deserve, or fires you because he or she doesn't like
your political beliefs, there will no longer be a union or civil service
law to protect you. It will be 'their way' or the highway." 

The Bush administration, which everyone knows is intimately tied to some
of the most rapacious billionaires in the world, is using the climate of
terror it has cultivated since 9/11 as a cover for good-old-fashioned
union busting. It argues "homeland security" will be jeopardized unless
the new department has "flexibility" in hiring and firing. 

The union says that this is nothing but "doublespeak for management
freedom from unions who advocate fairness and taxpayers who demand that
federal managers answer for their actions. Just ask the 1,000 Department
of Justice employees who petitioned for union representation and then,
on the same day, under an Executive Order signed by President Bush, were
stripped of their union rights and civil service protections--all in the
name of national security." 

AFGE President Bobby L. Harnage said in answer to the administration,
"Union membership has never been inconsistent with national security.
The right of federal employees to engage in collective bargaining has
never undermined homeland security. Federal employees, their families
and their unions are adamantly opposed to any effort to use the tragic
events of Sept. 11 to advance stalled but longstanding efforts to bust
federal unions." 

The Democrats who caved in said they got the bill drafters to add a few
weeks of federal mediation before the new personnel rules go into
effect, but the administration can overrule that. In effect, this is the
most virulent piece of anti-labor legislation in decades. 

Even the New York Times of Nov. 13 explained that "The agreement gives
the Bush administration a free hand to jettison Civil Service rules in
promoting and firing workers in the new agency and allows the president
to exempt unionized workers from collective-bargaining agreements in the
name of national security." 

The capitulation came just days after an election where the unions had
poured millions of dollars of their members' dues money into the
campaigns of Democratic politicians. 

The working class in the U.S. makes up the overwhelming majority of the
population. It has the skills and experience to run society on its own,
for the benefit of the people and not the profiteers, without needing to
take orders from any other social class. Yet it gives the appearance of
being weak. This apparent paradox reflects the huge gap between
consciousness and reality, and specifically the urgent need for the
workers to become as conscious of their own class interests as the
exploiters are of theirs. 

The rulers have become masters of deception, but they will be seen to
have feet of clay once the workers are in motion. It is those who claim
to defend and protect the workers who are weak, because they have one
foot in the political institutions of the ruling class. It is time for
militant unions to map out an independent program of struggle that looks
to the great reservoirs of working class strength that have yet to be
tapped. 

Such a struggle will surely burst forth as this government of, by and
for the billionaires continues its merciless assault on the workers and
oppressed of the world. 

                        - END - 
 

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