Obama Amends Labor Executive Order

On January 30, President Obama signed a slew of executive orders on labor relations issues involving federal agencies, contractors, and their employees. Yesterday, he released an executive order amending one of them. Apparently, the order had been construed as banning agencies and contracting departments from treating the money contractors spend on maintaining relationships with their employees as money they could be reimbursed for, even though the order was only intended to ban them from being reimbursed for money they spent specifically on fighting or encouraging unionization drives. The language has been clarified to read as follows:

"Contracting departments and agencies shall treat as allowable costs incurred in maintaining satisfactory relations between the contractor and its employees (other than the costs of any activities undertaken to persuade employees to exercise or not to exercise, or concerning the manner of exercising, the right to organize and bargain collectively), including costs of labor management committees, employee publications, and other related activities."

The order is smart, and recognizes that labor relations is a programmatic budget line item, not just a philosophy. Does it mean an executive order on labor-management relations within the departments and agencies and partnership councils is due soon? I honestly don't know. I'm surprised that it's taken this long, but the administration is reviving the Federal Labor Relations Authority, so perhaps it's just that change takes time.