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Subject: Shipyard Orders Clinton Signs Deep Sixed; Union Challenges Navy Directive as
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 92 04:28:31 EST
Message-ID: <22.1992Oct30.042831@AmeriCast.com>

Shipyard Orders Clinton Signs Deep Sixed; Union Challenges Navy
Directive as Pro-Bush Censorship<By Bill McAllister=Washington
Post Staff Writer=

The Hatch Act, as most federal workers know, bans them from tak-
ing an active role in partisan politics.

It does not stop individual workers from expressing political
opinions, slapping political bumper stickers on their cars, or
displaying political posters, according to the Office of Special
Counsel, which handles personnel disputes.

But when it comes to what federal workers can do on the job, oth-
er rules and regulations may apply.

That is what the Navy is contending in a dispute over a red,
white and blue poster endorsing Democrat Bill Clinton placed on a
union bulletin board in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth,
Va., by an engineers' union.

The dispute, which the union Wednesday put before the Federal La-
bor Relations Authority, may define how far the government may go
in restricting political activities. "It's an issue of freedom of
political expression," said Julie Clark, a lawyer for the Inter-
national Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

The Silver Spring-based union said yesterday it is fighting a
Navy order to remove the poster as an act of censorship, inspired
by Pentagon officials who are "promoting the Bush-Quayle ticket,"
and filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the Defense
Department, the Navy and the shipyard.

What makes the Navy's action in Virginia puzzling, Clark said, is
that three other Navy shipyards - two in California and one in
New Hampshire - have displayed the same poster "in plain view of
management" since September without complaint.

A Navy spokesman said the two signs in the Virginia yard violate
"the neutrality that the public expects from the federal service"
and offended some workers by "condoning of partisan political
promotion."

In a letter released by the union, S. Lane Pittman, the head of
the employee division of the shipyard, said Navy officials told
him to order the posters removed. "Even where such postings do
not violate the Hatch Act, they are inconsistent with Department
of Defense policy prohibiting the use of military installations
for any activity that could be construed as political in nature,"
Pittman wrote the Portsmouth local.

Union officials said that letters they received from the Office
of Special Counsel and the shipyard's regulations seemed to sug-
gest that the poster did not violate either the Hatch Act or the
regulations. Rule 5-c of the 1988 shipyard instruction, for exam-
ple, said that each employee has the right to "display a politi-
cal picture, sticker badge or button."

The Office of Special Counsel also agreed that workers could
display a bumper sticker or a poster "as an expression of their
opinion as to political subjects and candidates." But the agency
added in a Sept. 4 letter to the union that a worker "should con-
tact his agency to determine whether there is a policy concerning
the display of political materials within the agency."

"A federal employee must follow whatever the internal rules or
regulations of their agency are," Office of Special Counsel
spokeswoman Laura Blades said.  She likened the rules to the re-
gulations of a townhouse development that prohibits signs. Re-
gardless of the law, Blades said, "Those rules and regulations
take precedent."

Clark does not agree. "The rules and regulations cannot be con-
trary to the law."<02:17 10-30C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)