Akaka pushes for worker protection
By Susan Roth
Advertiser Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Plans for the proposed Department of Homeland Security must include union and whistleblower protections, Hawai'i Sen. Daniel Akaka said yesterday in defiance of a veto threat from the White House.
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Akaka, chairman of the Senate federal services subcommittee, helped shape the Senate bill to create the new Cabinet-level agency. The measure is expected to hit the floor later this week, but the Senate plans to go home at the end of the week and return to the homeland security debate after Labor Day.
Sen. Daniel Akaka helped shape the homeland security bill.
While the Republican-led House approved the Bush administration's plan, the Senate bill is substantially different. President Bush has threatened a veto if it passes with the union and whistleblower protections Akaka and others in the Democratic-led Senate are pushing.
Saying the agency needs greater flexibility in hiring and responding to emergencies, Bush wants the new department head to be able to waive civil-service laws.
The bill represents the largest federal government reorganization in 50 years and would result in merging 170,000 employees from 22 agencies into a new department with an annual budget of $37.5 billion.
"The president wants to transfer employees to this new department without specific guarantees," Akaka said in a Capitol Hill news conference. Joining Akaka were several other Democratic senators, a local firefighter who responded when the Pentagon was attacked Sept. 11, and a Michigan border security agent fired for speaking out about problems at the nation's borders after the attacks, then reinstated when his union defended him.
"No one has shown that union employees, whether they are federal border agents, local police and firefighters or paramedics, are less effective, less efficient or less loyal because they are union members," Akaka said.
Agencies already have a great deal of flexibility on emergency job changes under current law, Akaka said, but an amendment he crafted with Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, would provide even more freedom for managers throughout the government, not just in the homeland security agency.
Other Akaka amendments would extend whistleblower protections specifically for airport security screeners and federal employees transferred to the new homeland security department. He also authored a provision to ensure the agency's compliance with federal privacy regulations and worked with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., to preserve the rights of federal workers now in unions who would be transferred to the new department.
"The rights of all federal workers — union or nonunion — are my special interest," Akaka said. "The president, in picking this fight, is demanding an ill-advised remedy to fix a problem that doesn't exist."
