Union Accuses Defense Management of Imposing an Illegal Contract

A union representing around 400 employees at an Illinois Defense Department arsenal said that the facility’s management unilaterally imposed a new contract on its workforce after refusing to bargain over issues that the Biden administration made negotiable in a 2021 executive order.

Two days after taking office in January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order rescinding several anti-union edicts implemented by the Trump administration, as well as Schedule F, an abortive effort to strip the civil service protections of tens of thousands of federal workers in policy-related positions. It also instructed agencies to bargain over permissive, non-mandatory subjects of bargaining, specifically topics that are reserved as “management rights” under federal sector labor law.

“The head of each agency subject to the provisions of chapter 71 of title 5, U.S. Code, shall elect to negotiate over the subjects set forth [as management rights in the law] and shall instruct subordinate officials to do the same,” Biden’s order states.

But officials with the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2119 said management at the Rock Island Arsenal, a Defense Department facility in Illinois that builds military hardware including Howitzer cannons, are flouting Biden’s edict and on Monday unilaterally implemented a new collective bargaining agreement to avoid negotiating over permissive topics.

AFGE Local 2119 Chief Steward Tim Russell told Government Executive that management essentially agreed to negotiate over portions of the contract to rescind Trump-era policies, but ignored the part of the executive order that said they needed to bargain over management rights.

“Management rights are stuff we normally wouldn’t get a chance to negotiate—and that doesn’t mean that they’d have to give them up, but they would have to be negotiated,” Russell said. “Management said those policies weren’t affected by the Trump EOs, and we said, ‘Well, it’s affected by the Biden EO so we have to talk about them.’”

In March 2021, Office of Personnel Management guidance on implementing the executive order said that “a failure by agency managers to engage in bargaining over [permissive] subjects . . . would be inconsistent with the president’s directive.”

Russell said that in the interest of making progress in negotiations, AFGE officials agreed to “table” the discussion on management rights until the end of negotiations. But when the time came to revisit the matter, management refused.

“Now that we’re at the point where we can circle back to [the management rights discussion], they said, ‘No, we’re not going to talk about that, we’re going to implement [the contract],’” Russell said. “We kept insisting that we haven’t concluded negotiations, we’re not done yet. And today I got an official email that the contract is in effect.”

Russell said union officials have neither signed a new contract, nor sent a deal to members for ratification. And Russell said that when he read the contract that had been implemented unilaterally, he found that the department had quietly made changes in more than 20 of the collective bargaining agreement's 41 articles, none of which had been agreed to by the union.

Haley Smith, a spokeswoman for the Rock Island Arsenal, declined to answer questions about the union’s allegations or management’s apparent refusal to negotiate over management rights, but said the facility is committed to maintaining its labor-management relationship.

“The Rock Island Arsenal-Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center values the longstanding relationship we have with the American Federation of Government Employees,” she said. “While we work through outstanding issues, RIA-JMTC leadership remains committed to our employees’ interests and the accomplishment of the RIA-JMTC mission.”

Russell said his union has already filed multiple unfair labor practice complaints with the Federal Labor Relations Authority stemming from its contract negotiations with management, and AFGE plans to amend its complaints to include the latest alleged infractions of federal labor law.

 “I’ve been an employee for 17 years, and a union officer for four, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “Personally, I understand why they don’t want to talk about it. It’s their rights and they’ve never had to talk about them before. But the process and ways that they’re going about doing what they’re doing—you can’t just blatantly ignore the union. That’s all we’re asking for: come back to the table, where we’re waiting, and they just don’t want to do it.”