The Bush administration has backed down—for now—in its ongoing attempt to gut the workplace rights of 160,000 federal workers in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The department announced it would not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a ruling in June by the U.S. Court of Appeals that blocked the threatening new workplace rules.

“This is the smartest thing DHS has done in quite some time, said AFGE Counsel Mark Roth. “DHS management was in a battle they knew they couldn’t win. The decision not to appeal was the right thing to do for management, and more importantly, for DHS employees.”

The appeals court said the new Homeland Security personnel system unilaterally imposed on the workers last year by the Bush administration not only defies the well-understood meaning of collective bargaining, it also defies common sense.

The appeal court judges also said the new personnel system “does not even give the illusion of collective bargaining” and that parts of it “are simply bizarre.”

The Homeland Security rules are just part of a Bush administration move to revamp rules for the entire federal workforce. AFGE and other federal worker unions say the Bush plans would devastate the federal workforce by gutting pay, eliminating bargaining rights, rendering whistleblower protections moot and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars.

The Bush administration also has moved to impose similar rules, known as the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), on more than 700,000 Defense Department workers. Those rules were blocked by a federal judge earlier this year after a coalition of federal worker unions—the United DoD Workers Coalition—filed a lawsuit. The Defense Department has appealed that ruling.

“We are confident that DoD ultimately will follow DHS’ lead,” Roth added. “The NSPS rulings thus far have gone the way of the DHS rulings, so DoD would be smart to end this now.”

—Mike Hall, AFL-CIO