Unions representing U.S. government employees are fighting back against the Bush administration's latest assault on worker rights and protections.

Federal workers marched to Capitol Hill on Feb. 8 to protest new personnel rules at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and similar proposed rules at the Department of Defense (DOD) that will change the way workers are paid, promoted and disciplined, as well as limiting their recourse for appeals.

Federal employee unions also plan to file lawsuits in an attempt to block the new rules.

The new rules will cover some 110,00 DHS employees by 2009. Another 770,000 Defense Department workers also could be impacted if the new rules are implemented there. Bush administration officials have said they want to apply the new DHS rules to all federal agencies.

The new personnel regulations at DHS were permitted under the law that created the department in 2002 from 22 federal agencies. President Bush had demanded that personnel rules be changed to provide "flexibility" as a condition of accepting the DHS law.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), a sponsor of the law that created DHS, said the new rules "will undermine key employee protections that prevent workplace abuse and improve employee performance." He said the erosion of bargaining rights was "excessive."

AFL-CIO Pres. John J.Sweeney said the new rules "strike at the very heart of workplace protection rights and endangers our safety."

"At a time when we need to focus our resources on protecting the nation's security," Sweeney said, "this administration is taking away fundamental rights from the very people entrusted with guarding our borders. It's a policy that is no good for the civil servants at Homeland Security and no good for the nation."

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said the administration is "encouraging a management of coercion and intimidation. This is not a modern system. This is a step backward."

The current civil service system is based on 15 pay grades, with raises based on time in a job, as well as performance. The new rules will introduce a system of eight to 12 "clusters" based on occupation. Workers in each occupational cluster will receive one of four salary ranges or "pay bands" that are supposedly based on skill level and experience. Pay also will depend on geographic location and annual market surveys of similar private sector jobs.

To get a raise or promotion, workers must receive a satisfactory performance rating from a supervisor.

The new rules would limit the authority of the independent Merit Systems Protection Board to overrule managers' decisions on raises, promotions, and discipline.

Unlike the current rules, DHS officials would not be required to negotiate over employee deployment, type of work employees do, or the equipment they use.

Labor-management disputes would be handled by an internal labor relations board chosen and controlled by the DHS secretary–instead of being handled under the current process by the independent Federal Labor Relations Authority.

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the new regulations "were designed to ensure there is no outside judgement of what goes on within the department."

T. J. Bonner, president of AFGE's National Border Patrol Council, said "the new system allows for the sort of cronyism that nearly destroyed our nation's civil service a century ago."