6/17/09: NTEU National President Colleen Kelley yesterday supported the call of three members of Congress for President Obama to re-establish, by executive order, partnership in the federal sector. The letter was issued by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.).

“This trio of lawmakers has vast experience in federal labor-management issues and they understand that when agencies and employees work collaboratively the true beneficiary is the American taxpayer who sees more efficient service delivered in a cost-effective environment,” said President Kelley.

Rep. Towns is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Rep. Lynch chairs its subcommittee on the Federal Workforce; and Delegate Norton is a member of both the committee and the subcommittee.

The congressional members specifically asked the president to issue an executive order reestablishing the National Partnership Council, set up by a Clinton administration order in 1993. Federal labor-management partnership, as it was then called, operated until it was ended by the Bush administration in early 2001.

“Partnership, collaboration, cooperation—it does not matter what it is called,” President Kelley said. “The idea is that a mechanism be established by which employees’ voices can be heard in a non-adversarial forum where everyone retains their rights and where the objective is raising and talking through ideas that address ways to reach common goals.”

“Frontline employees not only have good ideas about what will make their agencies work better,” President Kelley said, “they want the same result their managers want—a smooth-functioning operation that serves the public effectively.”

The House members wrote that “union leaders with whom we have spoken agree that labor-management partnership recognized the importance of employees and their employee representatives to smooth, collegial decision-making in the government.”

Moreover, they said, the Partnership Council served the essential purpose of maintaining communication between the heads of executive agencies and the president to better serve the public.”

NTEU included a return to labor-management partnership among its recommendations to the Obama transition team last November. Since then, President Kelley has made clear she supports the development of a mechanism that seeks to solve problems at the lowest possible level and that includes employees and their representatives in the conversation in meaningful ways.