GovernmentExecutive.com

When titans wage war, you assume it's over something significant. The battle over collective bargaining in the proposed Department of Homeland Security is a case in point. This struggle involves the White House, powerful members of Congress and the AFL-CIO. Considering all the commotion, one might presume that the role of unions in the federal sector is a really big deal.

Look again. The degree of dust, smoke, and occasional bloodshed emanating from this struggle proves it's about something important, such as separating Senate Democrats from the labor vote prior to the midterm elections. But no way is this battle about the power of collective bargaining in the federal sector.

The U.S. Code prohibits federal unions from having an impact where it really counts. Title 5, Section 7106, decrees that collective bargaining may not affect management authority regarding mission, budget, organization, number of employees or internal security practices. It further decrees that collective bargaining shall not affect management's authority to hire, assign, direct, fire, retain, suspend, remove, reduce in grade or take other disciplinary actions against employees.

So where's the beef? Unions have power over federal managers - in their dreams.

Title 5 excludes collective bargaining in many agencies and subdivisions. Where it does exist, Title 5 gives the president authority to suspend negotiated agreements "if the president determines that the suspension is necessary in the interest of national security."

Those who would protect the new department from the scourge of collective bargaining won't even throw unions a bone. As GovExec.com has reported, they fear collective bargaining "will require protracted negotiations over everything from uniform design to whether an outside smoking area should be lighted." This is the point where a lawyer might say, "I rest my case." Unions must focus on these trivial topics because the important stuff is off the table. Would it really hurt the secretary of Homeland Security to let employees help design their uniforms? Would it hurt national security?

You don't have to read Title 5 to appreciate the relative powerlessness of federal unions. What amazes me is how stalwart union officials keep on truckin' despite impossible odds. In 1991, the Defense agency where I work employed more than 41,000 people. Today, our workforce numbers 17,000, and a recent management briefing showed the target as 12,000 employees in 2007. Collective bargaining has not impeded the hemorrhaging of these government jobs, the last semi-secure jobs in America.

I accept that it's good for taxpayers, and for the warfighters we serve, that my agency shrink and provide better services at lower cost. But unions cannot impede that goal.

If unions are powerless to affect management decisions and preserve jobs, just what can they offer federal employees? All they can offer are roles as a lobbyist and as a watchdog - and provide moral support.

When my agency experienced a dreaded reduction in force, the union sent an "observer." He stood by the computer as it whirled through its protocol to determine who would be forced out (relatively few people, as it turned out). My hat is off to this humble union official who offered himself as a symbol of concern. But there was precious little he could do to affect or even correct the process; it's not like he studied the computer code.

The watchdog role has some substance: Union officials can blow the whistle if the government fails to follow its own rules. There's a tsunami of civil service reform on the horizon, and I fear the workplace protections we know today will be swept away. But as long as the current rules are in place, unions can make it more difficult for managers to ignore them. That may make unions a pesky nuisance, but they can only protect what is already there.

The role as lobbyist may be the most important. As the titans clash in Washington, we hear the lonely voice of Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, rising like a piccolo above the horns, reminding any who will listen that "government employees are not the enemy." Who but the unions will tell Congress - as AFGE's general counsel, Mark Roth, did earlier this year - that the government's human capital crisis is a "self-inflicted wound" and that competitive sourcing policies "send an unmistakable message to current and prospective federal employees: The government does not want you."

I admire underdogs who wage the good fight, even if it's hopeless. And that's why I'm paying $7.03 a week to join the union.