Bush Brings Back Patronage

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

"George Bush wants to turn back the clock and return to 19th-century political patronage," says AFSCME Council 26’s Carl Goldman in response to last week’s news that the Office of Management and Budget plans to propose revamping personnel rules across federal agencies. "The bottom line is that workers are going to lose their rights on the job," said Goldman. The new personnel rules reportedly will resemble those already announced at the Defense and Homeland Security departments, which significantly narrow employees' rights to collective bargaining and all but eliminate any meaningful due process rights that currently enable employees to speak out when they see wrongdoing or mismanagement. Government worker unions say the rules are a direct attack on the civil service system created over a century ago to guard against a corrupt political patronage system in which political leaders required their appointees to devote time and money to party affairs. “This has profound implications for the entire country,” says AFGE Local 12 President Larry Drake. “Everywhere our lives are touched by the government would be even more subject to political and corporate influence.” AFGE, along with the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the National Federation of Federal Employees and National Association of Agriculture Employees, plans to file suit against the new Homeland Security personnel regs, challenging them on both a statutory and constitutional basis. Goldman and other local government worker union leaders tell UNION CITY that they plan to organize grassroots opposition.