Members of a National Treasury Employees Union unit at Energy Department headquarters have rejected a recently negotiated collective bargaining agreement with DOE management because they say it fails to implement a true labor-management partnership arrangement.
Members of NTEU Chapter 213 said no to a plan ironed out between agency officials and national union leaders because the contract had never been submitted to the local negotiation team, according to Al Knight, executive vice president of the chapter. The plan also did not fully address partnership requirements laid out in Clinton's 1993 Executive Order 12871, local union officials said.
In the order, Clinton called on federal managers to set aside traditional bargaining when possible and use labor-management partnership councils to settle workplace issues. Partnership councils have sprouted up around government since the executive order was issued, with varying levels of success at improving labor-management relations.
"Basically DOE management didn't even want to address partnership, they didn't want to mention the executive order or what was in the executive order," Knight said.
A spokesperson for DOE said officials from Chapter 213 had not formally contacted the agency with specifics about why the agreement was rejected.
"They negotiated the agreement over several months and it was initially signed off on by NTEU officials," the spokesman said. "The department is more than willing to sit down and discuss this with them. The ball is in their court as to how to proceed from here."
According to Knight, partnership was always the sticking point during the six-month-long negotiations over the collective bargaining agreement, and in March, the two sides reached an impasse over the issue. As a result, senior officials at DOE began to work with national union leaders in an effort to solve the problem.
"They had meetings without any of the people from the local chapters present," Knight said. "We sent various proposals back and forth ... we were waiting for comments from national and when we finally did look at [collective bargaining agreement], it was sent over from national to us for contract ratification."
According to Knight, the partnership set out by the agreement deprives local union leadership of autonomy and fails to fulfill the basic requirements of Clinton's order.
"DOE management has to obey, in some way, the executive order," Knight said.
But in 1999 a federal court ruled that agencies can refuse to obey the order and not be in violation of labor laws. The President can choose to fire officials who ignore the order, the court said, but unions have little recourse against agencies that do not comply with it.
Ellis Maupin, president of NTEU Chapter 213, said the unconditional partnership listed in the contract is "not one that that the Chapter 213 membership can live with." The union's existing contract remains in place until a new one can be negotiated and ratified.
"If we are forced into a partnership under this contract, the hard work necessary to make partnership effective will become half-hearted," Maupin continued. "Partnership is a painstakingly difficult process that has to evolve; it cannot be forced."