Council OKs agencies’ labor-management plans

The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations on Wednesday approved 24 agencies' plans, more than half of the 45 submitted, to create forums fostering collaboration among unions and agency leadership.

The council also voted to return plans to 21 agencies for further revision. Gina Lightfoot-Walker, an attorney for the National Association of Government Employees, said failure to consult unions was a common factor among the rejected proposals.

"I think there was a strong feeling in the working group that all agencies get under way with these plans, even if you are getting your plan back for revision," said Jane Holl Lute, deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department.

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said every agency covered by President Obama's executive order establishing the forums submitted a plan. He said he and other federal officials intended to reach out to 10 independent agencies such as the Smithsonian Institution to encourage them to voluntarily comply with the order.

Carol A. Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, said she was concerned the approved plans used different metrics to test whether the forums were successful in improving labor-management relations.

"I am concerned about where we're going to be a year or so from now when the council is going to be reporting to the president and we're going to be looking at assessments done in a variety of ways with no uniformity," she said.

But Scott Gould, deputy secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, said it should be possible to proceed with the partnerships and to settle on uniform metrics once they were under way. The plans are only proposals, the National Council members agreed, adding they could continue to give agencies' guidance and suggest changes.

Members of the council debated precisely what those metrics should be, even as they agreed there should be common measurements. Continuing a theme that emerged at the council's first meeting in February, Bonosaro and American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage said it was important not to rely heavily on grievances, unfair labor practices and requests for arbitration as measurements of the forums' successes. But Lute said tracking the number of grievances could give her a general sense of what was happening in her department.

The council recommended checking in with agencies in 90 days and again in six months, and to help them determine and adjust measurements as they begin their work. Berry said his staff would distribute suggestions the council made to agency leaders, and encourage them to keep several issues in mind, ranging from cost savings to reducing the time it takes to bargain.

"There really is a hierarchy of measures here," Gould emphasized. "The most important things are outcomes for taxpayers in the agencies."

The council reached a similar compromise on the question of pilot projects in which agencies will negotiate with unions on so-called permissive subjects, usually reserved for management discretion. Only one agency, the National Credit Union Administration, volunteered to be part of a pilot program with its local chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union. Many council members said they had heard agencies were reluctant to participate in the pilots because they were unsure if they could start such programs in subcomponents, or if they could bargain over some permissive subjects rather than all of them.

Berry expressed some concern about doing pilots on limited subjects, saying, "if the demonstration projects came in and only gave us information on technology, we wouldn't really be giving the president the information" he hoped to get out of the pilots he outlined in the executive order.

Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients suggested the council and agencies that are interested in participating in the pilot, but concerned about the scope, begin working together on guidance to help agencies design their programs.

Approved agency plans included those submitted by the Agriculture Department, Commodities Future Trading Corporation, Corporation for National and Community Service, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Education Department, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Federal Trade Commission, Health and Human Services Department, Homeland Security Department, Housing and Urban Development Department, Merit Systems Protection Board, National Mediation Board, National Science Foundation, National Transportation Safety Board, Nuclear Regulator Commission, OPM, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Peace Corps, Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, and Veterans Affairs Department.