diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index a5590213ca..af76c67ea8 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -268,6 +268,10 @@ Release 2.1.2 - UNRELEASED
     MAPREDUCE-5459. Update documentation on how to run MRv1 examples on YARN.
     (Zhijie Shen via acmurthy)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5554. hdfs-site.xml included in hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient
+    tests jar is breaking tests for downstream components (Robert Kanter via
+    Sandy Ryza)
+
 Release 2.1.1-beta - 2013-09-23
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/pom.xml b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/pom.xml
index edb0fc6b53..530822f119 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/pom.xml
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/pom.xml
@@ -124,6 +124,11 @@
             <goals>
               <goal>test-jar</goal>
             </goals>
+            <configuration>
+              <excludes>
+                <exclude>**/hdfs-site.xml</exclude>
+              </excludes>
+            </configuration>
             <phase>test-compile</phase>
           </execution>
         </executions>