President Bush will get his Homeland Security Department, but federal workers from 22 agencies will lose much of their job security.

That's the sorry deal.

Senate Democrats, who before the Nov. 5 election had resisted the legislation creating the department because of its weak worker protections, read the election results and saw the handwriting on the wall. Bush expects to sign the legislation by Thanksgiving after the Senate gives its go-ahead in a few days.

It is incredible that the president was so determined to weaken the Civil Service system that he delayed the formation of the department for months because of one hang up: He wants to hire and fire workers at will.

Under the legislation he now will be free to exempt unionized workers from collective bargaining in the name of national security.

And here we thought that domestic terrorism was supposed to be the issue and the basis for a new Cabinet-level department -- the first major government reorganization since World War II.

The GOP-controlled House passed the legislation in July along the lines proposed by the White House. But the sticking-point delaying Senate passage was the Democrats' insistence on protecting workers' rights.

Bush had sought a relaxation of the civil-service rules affecting the employees in the new department, hoping to cripple their unions.

As a sop to the Democrats, the latest compromise would require the department to negotiate workplace changes with the employees union and would be required to submit to federal mediation if no agreement was reached. But the department would have the last say on whatever it wanted.

Three centrist senators -- Ben Nelson, D-Neb., John Breaux, D-La. and Lincoln D. Chafee, R-R.I. -- broke the stalemate with concessions so lopsided in favor of the administration's goals that it would be laughable to call it a compromise. They acknowledged that they rolled over.

Breaux told reporters: ``The agreement falls short of what we originally suggested as the way to protect the workers of the new agency.

''But we knew it would pass regardless of what we did. So we tried to get something in it that would at least give unions a hearing'' before a mediation board.

Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle said that he disagreed with the personnel provisions in the bill but would not block it.

Some 170,000 government workers who will be moved into the department, like it or not, can say goodbye to the protections they have known in the past.

It is yet another indication that the president and his administration made up of CEOs see a golden opportunity to undermine labor unions. They also have little understanding of the long struggle of government workers to obtain the rights and benefits they attained under Civil Service.

The cherished Civil Service system was created in 1883 as a result of the politicization of government employees -- federal jobs handed out because of political connections, cronyism and nepotism. Though many presidents, Republican and Democratic, have referred to those on the federal payroll disdainfully as ''bureaucrats,'' most Americans know that they are dedicated career public servants who make the government run. Creation of the new Department of Homeland Security is a big victory for Bush, who made it one of the centerpieces of his campaign along with the relentless attack against Iraq.

He can also add to his political laurels the defeats of Sens. Max Cleland, D-Ga. and Jean Carnahan, D-Mo. -- both of whom had voted against the pending legislation in order to protect the rights of government workers. It was hardly a proud moment in American political history when Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in the Vietnam War, was denounced as unpatriotic for holding out against the bill for the sake of organized labor.

Bobby L. Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), denounced the latest version of the bill.

''The American public needs to know that the president's so-called compromise bill for the Homeland Security Department is a Trojan horse. It may be called ``homeland security'' but it has nothing to do with improving security. All it does is strip workers of the right to defend themselves in the workplace.''

Harnage called it a ''terrible piece of legislation'' that ``gives the president the power to strip unionized workers of their ability to represent themselves on matters as basic as hiring, firing, promotions, appraisals, disciplinary actions, matching pay to job duties -- the bread and butter of democratic unionism.''

The new department will include the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and some divisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Going nowhere is a sensible proposal in the bill by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., to create an intelligence division in the new department that would analyze raw intelligence about terrorist threats collected by the FBI and CIA.

The FBI and CIA are not about to give up their powerful sovereignty. When Bush gets his intelligence briefings, he still sees CIA director George Tenet and FBI director Robert Mueller separately.

The new department will take many months to function smoothly. And while it is designed to give Americans a greater sense of security on the homefront, the administration's insistence on jettisoning workers' rights is bound to make them more insecure.