Collective bargaining is a threat to national security. So says the Bush administration.

In his last fifty days in office, George W Bush has been hard at work, signing lots of executive orders and rules. Most recently, he signed one order that strips about 8,600 federal employees of their right to organize. Among those affected are people working in the Energy, Justice and Homeland Security departments. Bush's people told the New York Times that, “it would be inconsistent with 'national security requirements' to allow those employees to engage in collective bargaining ."

The affected federal workers -- who've had collective bargaining rights for over 30 years -- are wondering how their workplace rights have interfered with their national security work until now. Said Peter Winch, national organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees, "From then to now, from last week to today, what has changed from the national security perspective? These workers' rights are not trivial."

To the Bush Administration they are. Or maybe not.

The fact is, the workplace is only the latest arena where the Bush team's trotted out National Security to roll back long-fought for standards. Personal privacy, freedom from government spying; environmental protection and most spectacularly the scope of executive authority: in the name of security and protecting people, the Bush crew have changed or reversed a whole lawbook full of Congressionally-passed laws. (After hurricane Katrina, don't forget, almost the first response of the Bush administration was to suspend laws governing the minimum wage. )

Bush's executive order isn't trivial. It drives a stake right through the right of federal employees to stand together and negotiate. That seems like the threat with which the Bush crew's really fascinated. It's not so much terrorism as the principle of worker power. And they're not done yet, it seems.