CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE NAVEL LINT (via mc):

Employees to Protest Pentagon Labor Plan: Bargaining Jeopardized, Unions Say (Christopher Lee, February 10, 2004, Washington Post)

Hundreds of federal employees are expected on Capitol Hill today to protest a new personnel plan for the Defense Department that union leaders say would strip unions of any meaningful role in protecting the workers' rights and welfare.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, plan to visit key lawmakers this week and urge them to limit Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's plans to overhaul the department's labor relations system. Rumsfeld won authority from Congress last year to rewrite personnel rules affecting nearly 750,000 civilian employees. He argued that managers needed more freedom to rearrange money, workers and weapons in the war on terrorism.

Union leaders, who opposed the legislation last year, said yesterday that new labor relations "concepts" released in a 13-page memo last week by the DOD go too far.

"This is a union-busting approach to collective bargaining and labor relations," said John Gage, president of the AFGE. "This has nothing to do with national security." [...]

Joseph Swerdzewski, former general counsel for the FLRA, said the Pentagon's proposal would take labor relations at the department from a "rights-based" system installed in 1978 to a "consultative approach" that prevailed for decades before that. Its success would depend on whether the new Defense Labor Relations Board is perceived as fair by employees, he said.

Swerdzewski said the unions have little chance of persuading Congress to pare back Rumsfeld's proposals now. "The horse is out of the barn," he said.

Conservatives haven't even figured out yet that the Administration kicked the horse out.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 10, 2004 9:03 PM