What:
A press conference to issue a vote of no confidence against Donald Rumsfeld in his position as Secretary of Defense.
Where:
Hyatt Regency Hotel
400 New Jersey Ave., NW
Room Congressional A
When:
2 p.m., Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Who:
John Gage, AFGE National President
John Sweeney, AFL-CIO National President
Byron Charlton, Chair, United DoD Workers Coalition
Mark Roth, AFGE General Counsel
Don Hale, AFGE DEFCON Chairman
Washington—Defense union representatives from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the AFL-CIO and the United DoD Workers Coalition will call for a vote of no confidence against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tomorrow in response to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) decision to appeal a judge’s ruling that gutted DoD’s National Security Personnel System (NSPS).
The vote of no confidence comes following Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s ruling that provisions of NSPS pertaining to labor relations, collective bargaining, independent third party review, adverse actions, and the DoD’s proposed internal labor relations panel, the National Security Labor Relations Board, were illegal. AFGE, along with a coalition of unions representing 650,000 DoD civilian defense workers, filed the lawsuit that led to the ruling in February 2005. The Pentagon recently announced that it would appeal Judge Sullivan’s ruling.