Court dismisses Homeland Security labor relations case
Move ends protracted fight over collective bargaining rights.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit brought by the National Treasury Employees Union against the Homeland Security Department in light of the agency's recent decision to abandon a plan to implement labor relations rules as part of a new personnel system.
"There is no longer a case or controversy remaining in this case, and thus the case must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction," Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote in her decision.
Homeland Security and the Office of Personnel Management "will not revise the permanently enjoined regulations...at any time prior to the expiration of the agencies' authority to revise those regulations," the department wrote in a Friday filing with the court. "DHS will proceed with labor relations pursuant to applicable law."
"The successful conclusion of NTEU's lawsuit challenging regressive personnel regulations advanced by the Department of Homeland Security is a welcome end to a battle well worth fighting," NTEU President Colleen Kelley said. Kelley and other union leaders opposed the labor relations rules because they would have allowed the department to scrap collective bargaining agreements.
"The labor relations regulations DHS wanted to implement -- and that the White House wanted to extend throughout the government -- were an effort to reduce employees' workplace rights and give managers the unfettered discretion to alter fundamental working conditions essentially at will," Kelley said.
The case's dismissal formally ends a protracted battle over the labor relations rules. Congress' fiscal 2008 omnibus spending package omitted funding for the personnel system, effectively preventing Homeland Security from putting it in place. In 2006, the Court of Appeals said the labor relations rules would illegally curtail collective bargaining.
Kelley said NTEU planned to continue its battle against the personnel system as a whole and fight to win collective bargaining rights for Transportation Security Administration employees.