United States Office of Personnel Management LABOR-MANAGEMENT PARTNERSHIP A REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT December 2000

• The Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS) has reduced its workforce by over 40% with continuing cuts anticipated through 2005. A strong partnership between DRMS and AFGE Local 1626 has minimized labor-management conflict during these difficult times. Union leaders actively participate in senior leadership planning conferences, weekly management meetings, and on workforce initiative teams. Labor and management also invested heavily in a series of "Business Education" training classes that help employees understand the business changes driving workforce reductions. Labor and management continue to work together on ways to minimize the impact of downsizing on employees while realigning DRMS into a world class organization.
  
  
• The partnership between the IRS and the National Treasury Employees Union is more than just a way of structuring labor-management cooperation and quality improvement initiatives. At the IRS, partnership is the fundamental strategy for coordinating and integrating the IRS business activities. It is also the vehicle by which the agency plans to transform how it interacts with taxpayers, organizations and groups representing taxpayers, managers and employees. Partnering will become a mission-critical competency and a key enabler of continuous performance improvement for all IRS organization units and all levels of the IRS workforce.

• Immediately after Executive Order 12871 was issued, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the Metal Trades Council, AFL-CIO, created a Partnership Council and an Executive Steering Committee to improve organizational performance through labor-management partnership. Membership was limited at first to senior management and labor officials. Management and the union soon realized, however, that meaningful change would require support from every level of the organization. To gain that kind of support, every employee at the Shipyard was offered intensive training in leadership and quality principles. Membership on the Partnership Council was enlarged significantly.
  
  The results have been impressive. Productivity gains reached $61 million dollars in FY 1999, employee satisfaction is up, the production of hazardous waste and the cost of waste disposal are both down, and the Shipyard is a recognized leader in occupational safety and health.
  
  
• The Social Security Administration and AFGE signed a partnership agreement in 1994. Partnership has helped to reengineer work and reshape SSA as an agency. In 1999, the SSA national partnership council sought to strengthen the partnership-based approach to problem-solving and ensure its use throughout the agency. The council drafted an "Agency-Wide Partnership Communications Policy" emphasizing day-to-day interaction at all levels of the organization in order to resolve problems and share critical information. This policy was implemented with the vigorous support of the SSA Commissioner and the AFGE National President.

• On October 1, 1999, Congress abolished the United States Information Agency (USIA) and transferred its functions and employees to the Department of State. Foreign service employees at USIA were represented by the American Foreign Service Association and civil service employees were represented by AFGE. Working in partnership, labor and management resolved difficult and complex issues concerning union successorship without the need for third party intervention. Through their efforts, the parties avoided a costly six month phase-in period where all four unions would have held recognition and the agency would have been required to administer separate collective bargaining agreements, personnel policies, and regulations for employees working side by side.
  
  
• Over much of the last decade, the Defense Department has downsized significantly and reorganized frequently. Changes like these often spark intense labor-management conflict. Relying on partnership, many Defense installations completed major workforce changes with a minimum of conflict. Defense installations that touted the benefits of managing workplace change through partnership include the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Patuxent River, Maryland; the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach in California; the Area Command Mechanicsburg of the Defense Information Systems Agency; and the U.S. Army Reserve Personnel Center.
  
  
• Since Executive Order 12871 was issued in October of 1993, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has experienced two major reorganizations. In both cases, HUD and its unions worked in partnership to resolve sensitive and complex issues. Here is what HUD had to say about its partnership efforts:
  
  
  "Each of the four major programs of HUD reinvented itself from top to bottom from Headquarters to Field Office. The reorganization plans were produced by Program Reorganization Task Forces. Each Task Force had union representatives from AFGE and NFFE participating as full members. The goal of those groups was to achieve Labor-Management agreement on each plan using union predecisional involvement avoiding the need for formal negotiations. While at times terribly frustrating, the process was successful in each and every instance."
  
  
• Labor and management representatives of the Agriculture Partnership Council worked with congressional staff to draft a union successorship clause that was included in legislation to reorganize USDA. This collaborative effort avoided costly third-party proceedings and lengthy union elections.

• The Health and Human Services Partnership Council has published a Labor-Management Partnership Handbook in which the Council provides the following guidance for local HHS partnerships:
  
  
  "[A] first priority of business for agencies and their partnership councils (or management and union representatives considering establishing a partnership council) should be to conduct needed training for line managers, first-line supervisors, and union representatives who are Federal employees. Any partnership training should also include training in communication and cooperation skills. This training will need to be conducted on a continuing basis to reflect new approaches and to meet the training needs of new personnel."
  
  HHS offers several training classes covering basic partnership concepts. In addition, the agency also trains prospective facilitators. Given the tremendous importance placed upon effective facilitation in the interest-based bargaining process, building an in-house cadre of facilitators is a major asset for HHS and its unions and goes a long way toward explaining the success of their partnership.
  
  
• The Defense Civilian Personnel Management Service, Field Advisory Services (FAS) Division, has provided extensive training on labor-management cooperation to union and management partners throughout the Department of Defense. Forty-five Defense installations have received training on the basic principles of partnership, twenty have received training on partnership facilitation, seventeen have received training on interest-based bargaining or interest-based problem solving, and ten have received training on mediation. During the past two years, the FAS Division at Defense has devoted over 350 classroom days to partnership training for more than 3,000 management and union officials. In addition, FAS has worked with unions to jointly deliver partnership training for the National Partnership Council and at symposia sponsored by the Office of Personnel Management and the Society of Federal Labor Relations Professionals.
  
  
• The Department of Education Labor-Management Partnership Council sponsors annual conferences for managers and union representatives involved in partnership and for other interested managers and employees. These conferences provide an opportunity for labor and management to exchange ideas and experiences, build new skills, and renew their commitment to partnership. At the fifth and most recent conference, participants received training on the Partnership Council's new partnership handbook and were given an opportunity to contribute to the final draft to ensure it represents the best thinking of conference participants.

"The partnership has experienced successes in the past, but turnover in Partnership members and the lack of recent partnership training have contributed to a temporary lull in partnership activity. The parties have, however, committed to intensive training in June 2000, which all parties expect will reinvigorate the process."

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Page updated on January 12, 2000