House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Would a labor union undermine the cybersecurity of its members?

Of course not, you say.

But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) think otherwise.

Further widening the divide between representatives of the federal workforce and Republicans in Congress, they recently published an op-ed in The Washington Times with the headline: “How collective bargaining undermines cybersecurity.”

The letter comes as the committee, which includes Palmer, has considered legislation that strikes at the heart of federal unions. Legislation questioning the “official time” practice of allowing labor officials to be paid by the government while doing union-related business has been approved by the panel. The government does this by statute because federal unions represent everyone in a bargaining unit, not just those who are dues-paying members. Union reps also deal with management on issues involving workplace safety and training that apply to all employees.

Palmer is among 40 Republican sponsors of a bill that could severely cripple federal unions by eliminating dues payments through paycheck deductions, as is common in the private sector. That bill, curiously named the Federal Employee Rights Act, also would require at least 50 percent of all employees to vote for union representation, instead of 50 percent of those voting, as is common in elections generally.

The position of Chaffetz and Palmer regarding labor and cybersecurity was summed up in their article’s secondary headline: “Rules protecting federal unions make information breaches more likely.”

Linking federal unions to the cybersecutiry breach, revealed last year, that resulted in the theft of personal information of about 22 million federal employees and others might seem like a stretch, but that’s what the congressmen did when they accused the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) of interfering with cybersecurity measures.

They cited a Wall Street Journal opinion piece from last year that claimed the labor organization “made it harder” to protect federal files by filing a grievance after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped allowing employees to access personal email accounts from agency computers.

ICE lost the dispute twice, once before an arbiter and on appeal to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). Those decisions are not to the liking of the congressmen.

“In essence, the decision effectively established that the agency could not do anything to reduce security risks to its information systems without first providing the union with an opportunity to bargain,” they wrote.

“The current interpretation of the FLRA opinion is dangerous,” they wrote. “If agency directors are obstructed from taking immediate action to protect employees’ information without first going through collective bargaining, federal agencies are more vulnerable to attack.”

“Such an interpretation cannot stand,” they concluded, calling for congressional action. “Putting collective bargaining rights above security is preposterous.”