12/9/09: NTEU National President Colleen Kelley today welcomed a White House executive order setting the stage for the meaningful pre-decisional involvement of frontline federal employees in the operations of their agencies and paving the way for longer-term gains for taxpayers. NTEU played a lead role in encouraging the Obama Administration to adopt this program.

“This executive order, establishing labor-management forums, sends a positive message of change to both federal workers and managers, and represents a welcome, more productive way of doing business that will benefit taxpayers and our country,” said President Kelley.

“Based on our extensive knowledge of what works to improve the delivery of federal services, NTEU took the lead in calling for a more collaborative approach to federal workplace labor-management relations,” the NTEU leader said. “Now we look forward to working with agencies on the effective implementation and growth of this program.” NTEU will have a seat on the program’s National Council.

The Obama order creates a variety of federal sector labor-management forums—including a national-level advisory body—that use an important and proven technique for dealing with labor relations and operational issues in a less adversarial, more constructive setting. “This step by President Obama is about addressing problem-solving directly, with labor and management working together to improve processes at the front lines where the work is being done,” President Kelley said.

“Workplace collaboration works,” she added. “Experts from outside the government and within it know it is in the best interests of the public for federal agencies to take full advantage of the views of frontline employees. Their expertise is an indispensible tool in the effective functioning of their agencies.”

The NTEU leader pointed to a successful drug interdiction program called Operation Brass Ring, launched more than a decade ago, that was the result of collaboration between NTEU and the then-U.S. Customs Service. The program used an unprecedented level of labor-management cooperation, generating a wide range of innovative and unpredictable enforcement techniques leading to a 45 percent increase in narcotics seizures over a six-month period.

She emphasized, in addition, that a collaborative approach likely would result in a reduction in labor-management disputes, including grievances, unfair labor practices and court cases. “When employees are included at the beginning of the process, with meaningful pre-decisional involvement, both parties take ownership of the issue, making implementation easier,” President Kelley said.

NTEU made reestablishing collaborative labor-management mechanisms a key part of the union’s transition recommendations to the administration.

“We now have an opportunity to redefine federal labor relations, to encourage constructive conversations between employees, their representatives and managers that have been stifled—to the serious detriment of their agencies and the country—for nearly a decade,” said Kelley.

The Obama order creates a National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations involving officials from the Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Labor Relations Authority, as well as leaders of federal employee unions including President Kelley, manager groups and others.

The order further directs agencies to establish labor-management forums at appropriate levels, or to adapt existing councils or committees, if such groups exist, to help change government.

President Kelley said NTEU looks forward to participating in pilot programs authorized by the order to evaluate negotiations over so-called ‘permissive’ bargaining subjects. These subjects—the numbers, types and grades of employees assigned to perform work and the means, methods and technology of performing work—are matters agencies can choose, but are not required, to bargain over. Kelley said she is confident such pilots will produce constructive outcomes and improvements.

“Creating these labor-management forums,” Kelley added, “will provide the kind of positive environment necessary for a meaningful discussion about solutions to workplace issues and their potential impact on an agency, its employees and the public.” She said it is particularly important to get effective forums operating promptly and effectively at the workplace level. “There are many, many issues at the local level that will benefit from this program.”