Today’s Good News: Natives Restless At EPA

A group of real heroes is PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility). These folks have long been fighting tooth and nail against the Bush administration’s “fox in the chicken coop” approach to environmental regulation. Recently, they took massive action to declare “no confidence” in their feckless leader, Stephen Johnson, and won a key victory.

In a February 29, 2008 letter, the presidents of 19 locals from four unions representing more than 10,000 staff from EPA headquarters and other offices served notice that they will suspend further involvement with the National Labor-Management Partnership Council. The Partnership Council is a nearly ten-year old forum for resolving disagreements.
The joint leap-day letter cites repeated instances of broken pledges or bad faith by Johnson, including:

  • Refusing to enforce the agency’s Principles of Scientific Integrity involving fluoride drinking water standards, organophosphate pesticide registration, control of mercury emissions from power plants, and “the California waiver decision where the unions contend Johnson has allowed outside influences to preclude good science in [EPA] decision making;
  • Using in-house legal staff to retaliate against whistleblowers and union officers; and
  • Ignoring requests to fix problems in EPAs performance appraisal system, which according to the unions, has deteriorated into jargon and subjective measures such that it is all but impossible for employees to know when they are performing at an outstanding level.

    • The EPA Labor Union Coalition, consisting of four major unions (the American Federation of Government Employees, the Engineers and Scientists of California, the National Association of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union), is particularly incensed by EPAs refusal to discuss, let alone negotiate, its closure of agency libraries. Last month, the Federal Labor Relations Board sanctioned EPA and ordered it to bargain any further changes with affected unions.

    On March 28, the EPA bowed to pressure and agreed to re-open the libraries by September, although  EPA is approaching the task of restoring its libraries grudgingly and appears to be trying to get by doing the bare minimum, according to PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg.  Operating on the principle that knowledge is power and they don’t want anyone getting any, they had eliminated library service in 23 states until Congress acted to reverse the decision in an attachment to a budget bill.

    With each committee appearance more contentious and embarrassing than the last, it is hard to see how Johnson can break this downward spiral except by resigning, added Ruch, pointing to Johnson’s recent claims that he cannot recall clear and overwhelming staff advice for granting California’s waiver requests, as evidenced by memos and PowerPoint presentations being unearthed by committee investigators. It is a very bad sign that Johnson has been reduced to the Alberto Gonzales defense.

    Checkout PEER here.

    Filed by Karen on April 7th, 2008 under Environment, Labor, Media, Open Government


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