For Immediate Release

For further information:
Mike Clarke, (253) 227-3061
Paul Bigman, (206) 214-6169

Labor, Community Leaders Protest Attacks on Independent Federal Workforce

Workers at Madigan Hospital were joined by other union activists, area faith leaders and community supporters at a spirited informational picket this morning at the entry gate to the hospital and Fort Lewis.

The rally was to protest proposed new federal rules for civilian employees of the Department of Defense (DoD), called the National Security Personnel System, or NSPS.

NSPS has gone through periods of opportunity for public comment, and is now before Congress for review. A coalition of 36 unions representing federal workers is in negotiations with government officials about the terms of the proposal. Union and community leaders fear that, if implemented, the proposals would undermine the independence of the federal workforce.

"We're deeply concerned about people losing rights as workers and as Americans in the name of national security," explained Rev. David Alger, Executive Director of Associated Ministries of Tacoma-Pierce County. "NSPS has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with our deteriorating rights as Americans."

NSPS has been proposed by the Bush Administration to change working conditions for 750,000 civilian DoD employees, including those at Madigan and Fort Lewis. Their union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), represents 600,000 federal employees.

"Our members at DoD take a sworn oath to ‘protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic,'" stressed AFGE International Vice President Gerry Swanke. "But NSPS would encourage the government to replace civil service employees with contract workers, whose loyalty is to the dollar, not to the public interest."

In addition, NSPS would allow retaliation against whistle-blowers or others who try to protect the public interest. Bianca Plank, a nurse at Seattle's Veteran's Administration Hospital, worried that it would encourage "a lack of information to the public about what our government is doing, eliminating our role as public guardians."

"It's an effort to get rid of us and get contract workers in," charged Jeannette Kazear, who works in Madigan's breast cancer clinic. "We stand between the public taxpayer and fraud. Under NSPS, workers may be afraid to speak out."

The proposal would permit DoD to transfer civilian employees at will anywhere in the world, as though they were in the military. "They say we don't have a draft," noted AFGE Legislative and Political Organizer Cheryl Kelso, "but that's what this would be – a backdoor draft." Kelso added that one bad review by one supervisor could be used to justify laying off a senior worker. "It wouldn't matter if you had 20 years of good reviews," Kelso charged, "one bad evaluation and you could be out the door."

Some found it particularly ironic that the policies are being proposed at military and VA installations. Andrew Terrell, a Madigan autopsy technician and himself a veteran, expressed outrage that NSPS would eliminate veterans' preferences for jobs. "All of our members in housekeeping are veterans," he noted, "and about 20% of them are disabled. Now they want to tell us that when we get back from serving our country overseas, we may not have any jobs."

Fr. Bill Bichsel, a Catholic long active in the social justice movement, expressed sorrow and anger that "the people who built this country have the least security. This is an assault on Unions, on the right to work for just wages and to bargain collectively. They say it's for national security, but this gives anything but security to those who built our nation."

Added Sarah Dobkins, Director of the Micah Project at Tacoma's First United Methodist Church: "These workers have put in years, some decades, to support the military, and they deserve respect and their own economic security."

Paul Bigman, Co-Chair of Washington State Jobs with Justice, a coalition of 110 labor, community, faith and students organizations that helped mobilize community support, stressed that "real national security means a federal workforce that's accountable to the public, and not to whoever holds office. Real national security means economic security, adequate health care, fair work rules. Real national security means justice on the job."

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