To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. NEBRASKA AVENUE Then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) addresses the International Association of Fire Fighters Convention on May 11, 2007 in Portsmouth, NH during the presidential campaign. The administration’s friendly relations with organized labor are now extending into homeland security. Labor’s day at DHS BY KELLEY VLAHOS, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT ALL OF A SUDDEN, DOORS SEEMED TO OPEN UP TO COLLEEN KELLEY. A NEW SITUATION INDEED, SHE SAID. AFTER ALL, THIS WAS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS), AND FOR THE PREVIOUS SIX YEARS, LABOR UNION LEADERS WERE PRETTY MUCH USED TO WAITING OUT IN THE HALL. “It’s great, of course, because for so long we have had no one to have a conversation with, to solve a problem; it’s always been a fight, in my view,” Kelley said of the agency under former Secretary Michael Chertoff. Kelley is president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents about 20,000 employees under DHS, mostly Customs and Border Protection officers. Like the American Federation of Government Employees, which also represents thousands of DHS workers, NTEU had early face time with new DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, and is so far enjoying the new pro-labor vibes throughout the Obama administration and the Democratic-majority Congress. There are currently 10 unions representing 58,000 DHS employees, according to agency officials. “It was clear to me that there was a real different attitude,” Kelley said of the meeting with Napolitano shortly after the new secretary was sworn in. “Having an administration and Congress to work with and to be able to identify and resolve problems in a much more constructive way than we have in the past is something I think will be good for the department.” To be sure, the administration of President George Bush and congressional Republicans were never really considered “friends of labor.” Meanwhile, year after year, unions work very hard to get Democrats elected. In the 2008 election cycle, labor contributed $74 million to federal candidates– 92 percent of them Democrats. President Barack Obama received $466,324 from the labor sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, while his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), received $24,650. Until January, the Nebraska Avenue headquarters of DHS had been under Republican stewardship, and sources, including former DHS officials, say there was a particularly prickly relationship with labor. When it was created, DHS pulled together 22 different agencies and departments, some of which already had union representation. Philosophically, the two sides approached maintaining the workforce differently, with the need for effective security left somewhere in a no-man’s land between them. “It was certainly a strained relationship,” said Barry Kasinitz, director of governmental affairs for the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), which welcomed not only Napolitano to its annual winter meeting in March but Vice President Joseph Biden and House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The IAFF represents some 293,000 firefighters in all 50 states. Kasinitz said, “Our champions in Congress” pursued bipartisan efforts to get full funding for firefighters every year—not the Bush administration.With them,he charged, “the firefighters were never at the table.” Tensions in other DHS departments are clearly more partisan, like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), over which Democrats and Republicans have been fighting since it was created in 2001. Airport screeners, or Transportation Security Officers (TSOs), are mostly represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), with a smaller number by NTEU, but Republican lawmakers have so far prevented them from obtaining collective bargaining rights and have sought to minimize union influence in the workplace from the onset. PHOTO BY DARREN MCCOLLESTER/GETTY IMAGES Fear for flexibility Critics say labor’s interference in pay and in other management decisions impedes the authority needed to remove workers from the line who are failing at their jobs, retool schedules when the threat level demands it, and, generally, to have the flexibility to make daily adjustments according to the security environment. In 2007, both Chertoff and TSA Administrator Kip Hawley argued openly against collective bargaining rights, which would give union representatives the ability to negotiate employee contracts and other Homeland Security Today Magazine | June 2009 Register online today for exclusive online content and eNewsletters 15