Clinton promises to push wider role for unions

After months of stalled discussions over how to improve federal labor-management relations, Clinton administration officials Monday pledged to do more to get federal unions involved in management decisions.

Federal union representatives who met with Clinton aides at the White House on Monday said the administration committed to several actions, including the following:

• President Clinton will bring the issue up at a Cabinet meeting, urging more labor involvement in management decisions.
• Administration officials will follow up with agency executives individually to make sure they try to increase union involvement.
• Agencies will file progress reports with the administration detailing steps they have taken to improve labor-management relations.
• The Office of Personnel Management will provide more training and support to help agencies set up strong labor-management partnerships.

The administration actions are designed to improve agencies' compliance with Executive Order 12871, a 1993 order that called on agency heads to establish labor-management partnerships, in which union leaders would be involved in more decisions. The order also instructed managers to bargain over issues such as position descriptions, the number of jobs in a unit, and the technologies employees have access to. Federal law does not require federal managers to discuss those issues with unions.

Partnerships are successfully operating in some parts of government, but in many locations, unions and management still have an adversarial relationship. In addition, many managers have resisted the order's call to bargain over so-called "permissive," or b(1), issues, saying an expanded scope of bargaining would slow down federal operations.

At the beginning of this year, administration officials floated a proposal under which Vice President Al Gore would have issued a memorandum requiring agency heads to sign a pledge to negotiate over permissive issues. Management opposition to that proposal stalled the administration's efforts for most of this year.

That proposal is no longer being considered, said Morley Winograd, director of Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Instead, the administration will devote more time, energy and resources to developing labor-management partnerships.

"We think we have the formula that works: an agency-by-agency approach with lots of time, attention and resources devoted to partnership," Winograd said.

Union officials said they are pleased the administration is committing to better implementing the 1993 executive order.

"I am pleased with where we are for a couple reasons," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. "It's been such a longstanding issue between the administration and the unions, and I think this is a resolution that will support the work that has happened in many places around the government. We received a commitment from the administration that the President would be reaffirming his commitment to b(1) and he would use every opportunity to raise this issue with Cabinet members."

Brian DeWyngaert, executive assistant to American Federation of Government Employees President Bobby Harnage, said the union is not 100 percent satisfied with the administration's plan, though he is happy with the administration's "genuine effort" to improve federal labor-management relations.

"We certainly think there are a lot of good examples from throughout government in which people are dealing under the framework of the executive order, and when they do it in a real way, that's where the best reinvention efforts have occurred."

Asked if the union would have been more pleased with signed pledges from agency heads to bargain over b(1) issues, DeWyngaert said: "I don't think a piece of paper is going to change people's minds."

Mark Gable, legislative director for the Federal Managers Association, said the association supports partnership efforts, so it backs the administration's plan to promote them.