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Saturday, April 7, 2012

MOST IMPROVED LABOR-MANAGEMENT COOPERATION...

2012 SFLERP LABOR-MANAGEMENT COOPERATION AWARD

Executive Order 13522 sparked the fire that forever changed the Labor/Management relations at Southwest Regional Maintenance Center, SWRMC, located at Naval Base San Diego, CA
Over the past 3 years, the Labor Relations program here at SWRMC has been actively involved in union activity. Prior to February 2009, we had a strenuous relationship with our union. There were over 100 Unfair Labor Practice, ULP, charges filed from 2000 until 2009 by the President of IFPTE Local 32, with the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Numerous grievances and information requests were of common practice submitted by the same President. Meetings where union presences were involved were disruptive and non-productive. SWRMC and IFPTE had been operating under an interim agreement dating back to March 2006. A new Collective Bargaining Agreement was needed; however no such new agreement would ever be negotiated with the Union, primarily because of a lack of a confidence and trust in the labor-management relationship.
In 2009, SWRMC hired a Senior Labor Relations Specialist with extensive knowledge and experience and one who has dealt with disruptive union officials with negative behaviors. The position acted as the Chief Spokesperson for all labor-management relations affecting and addressing all union issues. All decisions and notices emanating from this authority, which affect the bargaining unit was acted upon through the oversight and direction by this position. On daily basis, he receives, meets, briefs and informs the union President and their designated representatives, on matter appropriate for review and consideration by the Command.
We now have a proactive leadership role in our Labor Management Partnership. Decisive action was been taken against the individual who held the position of Union President, because of the action taken, the Vice President, assumed the duties of President until May 2010. This president had little knowledge or experience in the Labor-management arena. Through patience and commitment, we fostered a sound labor management relationship by creating an opportunity for trust with the Union. We understood the importance of working with the newly appointed local president. Our labor- management relationship started to take form. A union election was held in May 2010, and a new President for IFPTE Local 32 was elected. For the past 3 years we dealt with 3 Local 32 Union Presidents. Since May of 2009, and to the present, we have made huge strides establishing a workable and trustworthiness relationship with management, our local union officials and membership. However, we now have a President that is more experienced, knowledgeable and understands the importance of a good labor-management relationship, one who likes to settle issues at the lowest possible level as IFPTE will undergo another election in May 2012.
In April 2010, a new Collective Bargaining Agreement was negotiated and sign by the Commanding Officer, the Union President and the negotiating team. It was approved by the Secretary of Defense on 08 April 2010. The first CBA for SWRMC! We convinced SWRMC management to send the Union President and our Chief Spokesperson Labor Advisor to the FLRA Training in Oakland, CA for implementing the Executive Order 13522 for the sole purpose of working together and start practicing on how we can improve government services to our Federal employees. This eventually led to improved labor-management relations which lead directly to the idea of creating a partnership council.
We signed our formal SWRMC Partnership Council Charter on May 31, 2011. We are currently meeting every Monday morning with the Partnership Council which includes the Executive Director (ED), the Head of Human Resources Organization (HRO), and the President and Vice-President of the Union. We utilize a, "Weekly Agenda" to help all parties stay focused on the action items assigned to them. We discuss the status of current items and new items are introduced by either party for discussion, but not for negotiations. Our relationship with our local union is a continuing effort engaging in weekly meetings.
We also have another formal Labor-Management Team, LMT, which we hold once a week with the Chief Spokesperson, and members of the HRO Staff to discuss actual issues that affect the command and may require negotiation. Our objective is to attempt to resolve conflicts with as little adversity as possible, with the goal being resolving issues to the agreement of both parties.
An agenda is formulated by the Chief Spokesperson and deals with everyday issues affecting and impacting SWRMC workforce, from issuing notices on changes, reorganizations, reviewing instructions, to potential grievances and ULPs. An open line of communication, discussion and disagreement are engaged in this meeting. However, we address the union concerns so as to prevent actions being filed. We continually work on this two-way communication effort, and it works. The importance of this LMT works well, and when no meeting occurs, problems, issues and union activity rises. Continuing this forum is vitally important in keeping healthy relationship, and is a positive force in the right direction, to lose this avenue would be reverting back to a “no confidence labor management relationship”, bringing in more grievances, ULP charges and low morale.
Our biggest improvements here at SWRMC is our Partnership and the Formal Training that we’ re investing in our managers and employees. The regional FLRA training, onsite FCMS training, and local workforce seminars improve not only the partnerships of labor and management but the way we interact with each other. We strive to make our Command a place where people want to work and plan to stay for their foreseeable future. We want to create a positive forward-thinking environment that is able to draw new, young talent familiar with current and upcoming technologies and whose leadership skills can be developed so that they can lead us into the future. Because of constant challenges with the DOD, and DON policies and program, we at SWRMC meet, address and implement the new changes. This Labor-management Team is only one of many reasons throughout the command leading us to the forefront, success and improving moral in achieving our command’s mission to the Navy!

Website: http://www.sflerp.org/index.html

Tom Watson & Vince Roman

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

U.S. Federal Employee Oath of Office...

As Federal civil servants, we take an oath of office by which we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution not only establishes our system of government, it actually defines the work role for Federal employees - "to establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty."

The history of the Oath for Federal employees can be traced to the Constitution, where Article II includes the specific oath the President takes - to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Article VI requires an oath by all other government officials from all three branches, the military, and the States. It simply states that they "shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution." The very first law passed by the very first Congress implemented Article VI by setting out this simple oath in law: "I do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States."

The wording we use today as Federal employees is now set out in chapter 33 of title 5, United States Code.

TITLE 5 > PART III > Subpart B > CHAPTER 33 > SUBCHAPTER II > § 3331
Oath of office

An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: “I, _______, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

This section does not affect other oaths required by law.

The wording dates to the Civil War and what was called the Ironclad Test Oath. Starting in 1862, Congress required a two-part oath. The first part, referred to as a "background check," affirmed that you were not supporting and had not supported the Confederacy. The second part addressed future performance, that is, what you would swear to do in the future. It established a clear, publicly sworn accountability. In 1873, Congress dropped the first part of the Ironclad Test Oath, and in 1884 adopted the wording we use today.
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Did you do this when you hired on?

Saturday, March 26, 2011

America is Losing our Way...

Losing Our Way
By BOB HERBERT

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.
Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable. It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.

This inequality, in which an enormous segment of the population struggles while the fortunate few ride the gravy train, is a world-class recipe for social unrest. Downward mobility is an ever-shortening fuse leading to profound consequences.

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&hp

This is my last column for The New York Times after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run. I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society. My thanks to all the readers who have been so kind to me over the years. I can be reached going forward at bobherbert88@gmail.com.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on March 26, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition.

Monday, November 15, 2010

The F* Word is coming for Federal Employees...

Debt-reduction proposals add fuel to criticism of government workforce

By Joe Davidson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2010; 7:12 PM


If federal employees didn't read the handwriting on the wall when Republicans won the House last week, they shouldn't miss the red lights that began flashing with the release of sweeping proposals to rectify the nation's finances.

The recommendations, by Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, would hit federal employees hard, freezing their pay and reducing their numbers.

Everyone, inside and outside of government, would take a blow under their controversial suggestions. And the proposals are by no means final. The draft documents released Wednesday by Simpson and Bowles, co-chairmen of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, represent only their ideas. There's no guarantee the commission will adopt their plan in the panel's final report, which requires approval by at least 14 of the 18 members. Some members of Congress wasted no time in blasting the blueprint.

For months, GOP lawmakers have called for cutting or freezing the size of the federal workforce and employees' compensation. These calls have fueled an image of bloated, budget-busting feds that sharply conflicts with the public service motivation that really drives them, especially those who could earn much more in the private sector.

"Federal labor is open and more than willing to do their part," said Matthew S. Biggs, legislative director of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, as long as they don't carry an unfair burden.

Full Article and Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111106704_pf.html

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Federal Pay Debate...

Our country is in the middle of a deep recession with public concern about deficit spending and now the spin doctors and pundits think that federal salaries are too high. I’m a GS-11 level public servant, and all pay tables for federal employees are public information, posted at www.OPM.gov.
Take my job as an example; I’m a Shipbuilding Specialist working at Naval Base San Diego doing government oversight for repair of the Navy ships by contractors working at the local shipyards. My degree is in hard work and on the job training with special training requirements for marine paint inspection, welding inspection, electrical, mechanical, structural, propulsion, combat, navigation, logistical acquisition, technical blueprint reading, repair manuals, and financial contract applications. All of which is inputted, tracked and recorded by me using the latest in a centralized computer data base, for accountability by my co-workers and management.
In order to perform my job I have to work in one of the worlds most dangerous working environments the shipyard and ship board, to keep our ships for the men and women of the US Navy repaired and safe when they perform their missions to keep our country free. If I were to compare my knowledge skills and pay to that of my counter parts at other shipyards or naval maintenance centers in the United States, our current position and salary is not even at the same pay level! So if my federal pay is too high for what I do, please contact me through the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council and walk in my shoes for a day at work, to see if you agree with the pundits.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

What do we have to do to be upgraded to a GS-12?

Follow my lead.

First thing you need to do is when your Supervisor sits down with you to review your PARS, your personal appraisal every six months, "Mark" the box that says: "Are you working to the correct Position Description?" Mark it NO!

Second thing you do, after you have attended the command's training, is ask for a "Desk audit". Third thing you can do is see me to sign my petition, that is going to Code 300!

Call this the beginning!

I was recently assigned to participate in the Integrated Test and Certification working group during this summit meeting in Norfolk, VA..
Some of the proposed changes are more accountability from all of the RMC's, SRA's and SY's. They want changes in the way we do business, now and in the future.
They want Uniform Certification of Ship's System's prior to fast cruise and sea trails, to reduce the high amount of failures coming out of the current CNO Avails and CMAV's. They proposed changes to the S.I. 009-04, 009-60 and 009-67, per the SSRAC committee. They want changes to the JFMM Vol. 7 Chapters 4, 7 , 8 and 11 And they want to create, under Code 200, a Test Coordinator.
They want more supervisorary control by the Maintenance Teams over the contractors by the PENG, PM, SBS, QA, ACO and Logistics team members.
They want more neutral QAS oversight of the PMs and SBSs by performing more onsite audits and review of QA documents and PVI's independent of the Project Team.
They are calling for more than 250 manning increases at the RMC's, SRA's and SY's. And they are going to be asking for Uniform PD's for the PM, SBS, and QAS, personnel.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Our agenda for the future...

I want to meet with all officers of the Union and the E-Board, as soon as possible, to set up individual duties and responsibilities of each requirement of office, to insure total transparency and accountability to the membership!

1.Assign each officer a current list of monthly duties and requested achievements.
2.Provide formal training for each Union Officer and Steward as required, to be successful. Want to be a Steward ? Write a grievance! We will train you !
3.Make all monthly lunchtime meetings work, so that more members will attend, by modifying Robert ‘s Rules and switching over to an agenda list, sent out in advance by email, and by settling all issues at our meetings, within 30 minutes flat.
4.Move ALL Union lunchtime meetings into the MWR Waterfront Rec. Center (Club Metro) Bldg. 45, when space is available in their conference room (BYLAW CHANGE). The Crew House can cater lunch, during these meetings.
5.Introduce all new members and have them take the Union pledge at monthly meetings,
6.Use the Union email system to provide more pay, benefits, and Union related news, to educate and inform the membership on the latest issues and concerns.
7.Make the Union offices in Bldg. 76, more accessible to the membership.

Marketing of Local 32
The sole purpose of marketing of our Local is to present to management a visual representation designed to create a sense of solidarity among the Union membership! Ideas to increase everyday visibility:

1.Hold a contest to create a new Local 32 logo/icon!
2.Create a Union website, ie: http://www.ifpte.org or http://www.ifpte.com/ , Sample URL: http://www.IFPTE_Local32.com
3.Union trinkets, IE: T-shirts, jackets, business cards, coffee cups, lanyards, pins, bumpers stickers, decals, etc. Example: Tiger Eye Design (800) 844-3739, Website: http://www.tigereyedesign.com/union_products.html
4.Union Bulletin Boards, in every major building. Provide a Union presentation at In-Doc. for new employees. ALL members have a current membership card.
5.Offer a head hunter fee, for signing up new members, to increase membership from the current 23% of total BYUs, to at least 50% in two years.
6.Annual Union picnic or dinner, for members and family.
7.Create a local coalition of Federal Unions, AFGE, IFPTE, IFF, NAGE, etc. for Federal Employees, in the San Diego area.