We get one for the good guys. Sort of. Friday night, a federal judge struck down the personnel rules adopted by the Department of Homeland Security because, as The New York Times reports today, the rules did not “ensure collective bargaining” even under the pathetic framework of the bill passed by Congress that created the department.

When the Department of Homeland Security was created, Congress, over the loud objections of people like then-Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, allowed the Administration to rewrite the normal personnel procedures typically incorporated in Civil Service laws. But, the Administration went too far, trying to write rules that would, in effect, allow it to ignore any part of a collective bargaining agreement.

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the American Federation of Government Employees and several other unions sued the Department, arguing that the rules were illegal and even Judge Rosemary M. Collyer (a Bush appointee) had to agree, stating in her opinion that, “The Court agrees that the new HR System has failed
at one of its basic requirements: it does not ensure collective bargaining rights…collective bargaining has at least one irreducible minimum that is missing from the HR System; a binding contract.”

Collyer’s decision also has a similar feel to the way this Administration acts generally: the “my-way or the highway” approach. The Department tried to create a system that would give it the unilateral right to ignore negotiated provisions. As Collyer wrote, “A contract that is not mutually binding is not a contract. Negotiations that lead
to a contract that is not mutually binding are not true negotiations. A system of ‘collective
bargaining’ that permits the unilateral repudiation of agreements by one party is not collective bargaining at all.” The ruling prevents the Department from implementing the rules, which were due to go into effect on Monday.

You may remember that Cleland, a triple-amputee from the Vietnam War, fought the attempt to allow the new Department to ravage civil service rules and collective bargaining. In his re-election campaign, his then-challenger Saxby Chambliss, questioned Cleland’s patriotism and commitment to fighting terrorism, using Cleland’s fight in defense of workers’ rights at the new Department.

I guess Chambliss was pissed that Cleland hadn’t lost his fourth limb in Vietnam, obviously a sign of weakness. Oh yeah, Chambliss never served in the military because of a “bad knee.”