More On Partnerships

Carl Goldman, the Executive Director of AFSCME Council 26, emailed me with another take on the debate shaping up on how to move forward with a revival of labor-management partnerships. Carl writes:

"The major problem with Clinton's executive order labor-management relations was that there was no enforcement on the management requirement to negotiate over the "permissive" areas of the federal labor-management statute, i.e. "the numbers, types and grades of employees or positions assigned to any organization subdivision, work project, or tour of duty, or on the technology, methods and means of performing work." (5 USC Section 7106 (b)(1). In fact, management at most agencies refused to bargain over these areas, and the Clinton Administration did nothing about it. At one point

the Administration floated a new Executive Order that would have required compliance, but the manager associations complained and the President caved and it disappeared. Any new Executive Order must include a mechanism to ensure management compliance."

I think this gets to a larger point. If the unions want to permanently enshrine partnership, an executive order isn't the ticket. They'll need legislation, which the National Treasury Employees Union will push for. I don't know if it'll be harder to build consensus around an executive order or a piece of legislation. Either way, it'll be interesting.