By Doug Cunningham

The Pentagon is pressing ahead with a personnel system overhaul that guts collective bargaining agreements and the power of unions to represent their members. Six hundred fifty thousand workers and their families would be affected. Several public employee unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, are planning to sue in federal court to block the attack on collective bargaining rights. The unions say the plan to gut collective bargaining rights violates federal law. Workers and their unions won a similar suit against the Department of Homeland Security when the court ruled the government was violating the law in effectively wiping out collective bargaining rights .