As a parting gift to many of those who have stuck around during his tenure, President Bush yesterday issued an executive order stripping the collective bargaining rights of thousands of federal employees. Reg•Watch has been focusing on the regulations the Bush administration is expected to finalize before Jan. 20, but executive orders serve as another method for President Bush to advance his priorities in his waning days of power. Executive orders are easier to do than are regulations but also easier to undo. In both cases, it involves just the stroke of a pen. The executive order, Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program, removes collective bargaining rights for some employees in the departments of Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and Treasury. In discussing one of the agencies affected, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a spokeswoman for a federal employees union was not happy. From The New York Times: Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said that employees at the alcohol, tobacco and firearms agency had just "had their collective bargaining rights stripped away for no justifiable reason." The union said it represented 1,600 employees at the agency. Those employees have had collective bargaining rights for more than 30 years, with no indication that the rights interfered with the agency's mission, Ms. Kelley said. Bush's order focuses on those employees whose primary function is "intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work." According to the Times, "Mr. Bush said it would be inconsistent with 'national security requirements' to allow those employees to engage in collective bargaining with respect to the conditions of their employment." Seems a little funny that Bush would wait so long to strip away employees' collective bargaining rights if they pose such a significant threat to national security. We sure are lucky the terrorists didn't win in the interim. President-Elect Obama has pledged to use his own right to issue executive orders to overturn some of President Bush's. This executive order may be one that Obama targets.