[Senate Hearing 112-417]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-417
LABOR-MANAGEMENT FORUMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
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HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 11, 2011
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
JON TESTER, Montana RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MARK BEGICH, Alaska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Nicholas A. Rossi, Minority Staff Director
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Joyce Ward, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARK BEGICH, Alaska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
Lisa M. Powell, Majority Staff Director
Bryan G. Polisuk, Counsel
Rachel R. Weaver, Minority Staff Director
Sean Kennedy, Professional Staff Member
Aaron H. Woolf, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Akaka................................................ 1
Senator Johnson.............................................. 2
Prepared statement:
Senator Akaka................................................ 35
WITNESSES
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Hon. John Berry, Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management... 4
Hon. W. Scott Gould, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs............................................... 5
Pasquale (Pat) M. Tamburrino, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy, U.S. Department of
Defense........................................................ 7
Gregory J. Junemann, President, International Federation of
Professional & Technical Engineers, AFL-CIO.................... 19
William R. Dougan, National President of the National Federation
of Federal Employees........................................... 21
Patricia Niehaus, President, Federal Managers Association........ 23
George Nesterczuk, President, Nestercsuk and Associates.......... 24
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Berry, Hon. John:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Dougan, William R.:
Testimony.................................................... 21
Prepared statement........................................... 76
Gould, Hon. W. Scott:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 42
Junemann, Gregory J.:
Testimony.................................................... 19
Prepared statement........................................... 66
Nesterczuk, George:
Testimony.................................................... 24
Prepared statement........................................... 103
Niehaus, Patricia:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 89
Tamburrino, Pasquale (Pat) M., Jr.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 46
APPENDIX
Background....................................................... 108
Statement for the Record from:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)..... 115
David J. Holway, National President of National Association
of Government Employees. NAGE/SEIU Local 5000.............. 118
The Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA)... 124
Carol Bonosaro, President, Senior Executives Association..... 128
LABOR-MANAGEMENT FORUMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, the Federal Workforce,
and the District of Columbia,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:34 p.m., in
Room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K.
Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Akaka and Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. This hearing will come to order. Aloha and
good afternoon, everyone. I would like to thank you all for
joining us today for this hearing examining labor-management
partnerships in the Federal Government.
In December 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order
(EO) to improve government services by creating Federal labor-
management forums. The Executive Order, which was similar to my
2007 bill on labor-management partnerships and a previous
Executive Order during the Clinton Administration, established
the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations
Association. It also required Federal agency heads to establish
labor-management forums of employee representatives and agency
officials.
President Obama's Executive Order emphasizes a critical
point about government performance: That a non-adversarial
forum for employees, managers, and agency officials to discuss
government operations will improve the services our government
provides. Employees are in the best position to inform
executives about the details of operational problems or
inefficiencies. In addition, labor-management partnerships
improve employee morale, which also helps drive better
performance.
Data has shown that, once established, effective labor-
management partnerships will reduce costs. In 1998, the U.S.
Customs Service obtained an independent cost/benefit analysis
of its labor-management partnership with the National Treasury
Employees Union (NTEU). This analysis showed that the
partnership produced $3 million in net savings between 1993 and
1998. For every dollar the Customs Service invested in its
labor-management partnership, it received a 25 percent return
on its investment.
More recently, we have seen examples of cost savings and
increased government efficiency as a result of labor-management
partnerships at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard--in my home
State of Hawaii--and at the United States Forest Service. I
look forward to hearing about these recent success stories
today. As labor-management partnerships are re-established
throughout the Federal Government, I expect that we will learn
of many more partnerships creating short-and long-term cost
savings.
I have long understood that its employees are the Federal
Government's greatest asset. A fair, efficient, and effective
government requires that Federal employees have a voice in
their workplace.
I am looking forward to hearing from Director Berry about
the recent work of the National Council on Federal Labor-
Management Relations. I know that he has worked hard in his
role as co-chair of that body, and I commend him for his
dedication to this issue.
I am also excited to learn more about the current efforts
at the Department of Defense (DOD) where labor and management
are working together to establish a new performance management
system and hiring process. As our Nation's largest agency--
performing critical functions--I believe that DOD can serve as
an example to the rest of the Federal Government on how
employees and management can work together to achieve positive
results.
With that, I ask my friend and colleague, Senator Johnson,
for any opening remarks he may have. Senator Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Well, thank you and aloha, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Aloha.
Senator Johnson. Just quickly, my own background is in
manufacturing and accounting, so I am definitely going to be
keying in on numbers and looking for metrics. So I appreciate
that part of your testimony.
I just want to open up, first of all, by saying that I
think it is pretty obvious that a good relationship between
labor and management is a key to good operational efficiency.
There is absolutely no doubt about it that the workers on the
front line probably have the best ideas in terms of how to
efficiently and effectively operate and either produce products
or provide the service that they are required to do. So I think
that is pretty well understood now in the private sector. I
think most successful managers understand that and are working
hard toward having those good, cooperative relationships with
employees.
I would also say that private unions have played a key role
in making sure that the balance of power between management and
employees became a little bit more in balance certainly than
what it was in the early 20th century.
But there is a big difference between private sector unions
and public sector unions. In the private sector you actually
have a market discipline. If unions go too far, if they bargain
for too high wages, too high benefits, they put their business
at risk. And if the business goes out of business, they lose
their jobs. So you have that market discipline.
That same discipline does not operate within public sector
unions, which is why people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR), certainly a friend of the labor movement, had the
following quote. He said, ``All government employees should
realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually
understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It
has distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to
public personnel management. The very nature and purpose of
government make it impossible for administrative officials to
represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions
with government employee organizations.''
Even the AFL-CIO's George Meany in 1955 said, ``It is
impossible to bargain collectively with the government.'' Let
us face it. Public sector employees are a reality, and I think
we need to figure out how we can deal with them effectively so
that they actually work cooperatively and help our Federal
Government become more fiscally responsible.
I would like to just quote a few financial facts here. I do
not want to turn this into a budget meeting, but I think this
really does drive our discussion here.
Ten years ago, under Bill Clinton, his final budget, the
Federal Government in total spent $1.8 trillion. Ten years
later, this last year, we doubled that amount. We spent $3.6
trillion. In President Obama's 2012 budget, he projected out 10
years, and according to his budget, we will be spending $5.7
trillion in another 10 years. So, again, we are not cutting
government. We are just trying to limit the growth of
government.
Our Nation's debt right now stands at $14.7 trillion, and
that would not be a problem if our economy was $100 trillion
large. But it is about $14.5 trillion large. And just like a
family that is in too much debt and is having a hard time
growing its own personal economy because they are just spending
all their money servicing the debt, they cannot increase
consumption, the same exact fiscal reality faces our Nation
because we have too much in debt.
So we are faced with financial realities here that are
pretty ugly, and, again, that is why it is very important that
we work cooperatively with the Federal workforce to make sure
that we have an efficient government sector.
I think with that I will stop. I will probably have some
other comments a little bit later on, but, again, I have a very
open mind coming in here. Again, I think it is exactly
important to have a good, cooperative relationship with the
Federal workforce. And I am going to be looking forward to the
testimony to see what some of those examples are.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Senator Johnson.
On our first panel, it is my pleasure to welcome the
Honorable John Berry, the Director of the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM); the Honorable Scott Gould, the Deputy
Secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); and Pat
Tamburrino, Jr., the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civilian
Personnel Policy at the Department of Defense.
It is the custom of the Subcommittee to swear in the
witnesses, and I ask you to stand and raise your right hands.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give
this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Berry. I do.
Mr. Gould. I do.
Mr. Tamburrino. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Let the record show that the
witnesses answered in the affirmative.
I want you to know that although your remarks are limited
to 5 minutes, your full statements will be included in the
record.
Director Berry, will you please proceed with your
statement?
TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN BERRY,\1\ DIRECTOR, U.S. OFFICE OF
PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Mr. Berry. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to
be here with you and the Ranking Member today. It is an honor
to be here with you, and it is also an honor to be here with
Deputy Secretary Gould and Pat, who have been great partners in
this effort, along with many other efforts to make our
government better and more efficient.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Berry appears in the appendix on
page 37.
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As the President stated when he signed this Executive
Order, Federal employees and their union representatives are an
essential source, as Senator Johnson said, of front-line ideas.
The Administration believes that a strong partnership between
the Federal Government and our employee unions is critical to
delivering better results for the American people.
Our labor partners are an essential source of ideas and
information. They provide valuable insight to improve working
conditions for all employees, and they provide innovative ideas
for delivering services to the American taxpayer in a more
efficient and cost-effective way.
The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations
includes representatives of our major large departments
throughout the agency from the management side, usually the
Deputy Secretary level, like Secretary Gould. It also includes
representatives from our management associations, senior
executives associations, front-line supervisors, and all of our
national labor unions.
In the first year, we focused on getting the process of
labor-management discussions set up. To date, thanks to the
Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Federal Mediation and
Conciliation Service (FMCS), more than 350 training sessions
have been held, reaching over 10,000 managers and union
representatives. Labor-management forums are now up and
running; 769 have been established, covering approximately
770,000 bargaining unit employees.
At OPM, for instance, our partnership with our unions is
strengthened by an open table where we allow any issue to come
for pre-decisional discussions before we have to reach the
mandatory bargaining table, and that collaboration has allowed
us to improve speed and efficiency of our mission. It allowed
us to reorganize ourselves so that we could streamline, and
control costs, while still providing better services. It also
allowed us to increase our training for our employees, and
working with our employees, we developed some very innovative
training and mentorship programs that have been of great
assistance to us.
Another thing is we survey each year throughout the Federal
Government our employees. When I got here, the Office of
Personnel Management was not in the top 10. In the 2011
Employee Viewpoint Survey, amongst all the agencies OPM is now
ranked in the top 10 in all of the category areas: Ninth in
leadership and knowledge management, seventh in results-
oriented performance culture, tenth in talent management, and
fifth in job satisfaction.
Let me point out again, the year before we were not in the
top 10 in any of those areas. I would credit our strong
partnership with our unions for the dramatic improvements that
we have been able to achieve in a very fast period of time
together.
Improving performance management is something I think both
parties and all parties can come to agree on, and that is,
making sure that we are getting the most out of our employees.
Over the last decade, we have spent millions of dollars
implementing different performance personnel systems, and most
of them have largely failed because they did not have the buy-
in of the employee groups that were working--they were
developed without their effective partnership. The No. 1 lesson
of those experiences is that employee engagement for
performance management reforms is essential for their success.
To that end, the National Council took on a work group with
our Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council, Mr. Chairman,
that you and Senator Voinovich formed to improve Federal
employee performance accountability, and just at our last
meeting we received the work product from that group. And I
have to tell you, it is very impressive.
The Council is now looking to roll this out in pilot form.
The Department of Defense is using it to inform their efforts
on performance management review. And I believe it is going to
achieve greater accountability for our employees and the
American public.
By working with our labor unions who represent our front-
line employees, we believe that we can be successful in
improving delivery of those results to the American people.
Even with the progress that has been made, there is still
much to do. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to testify
and will be ready to answer and discuss any questions that you
might have.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Director Berry.
Secretary Gould, please proceed with your statement.
TESTIMONY OF HON. W. SCOTT GOULD,\1\ DEPUTY SECRETARY, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
Mr. Gould. Chairman Akaka, Ranking Member Johnson, thank
you for the opportunity to appear here today alongside my good
friend and colleague John Berry and Pat Tamburrino to discuss
implementation of Executive Order 13522. It is a privilege for
me to be here today to represent Secretary Eric Shinseki and
the hard-working VA workforce, over 300,000 good people who
each and every day provide veterans and their families with
care and benefits.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Gould appears in the appendix on
page 42.
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Our mission at VA is to provide the best possible health
care and services to veterans wherever they reside. To
accomplish that common mission, both labor and management must
work together as collaborative members of the same team.
VA has a long history of working jointly with its labor
partners. For the past 15 years, we have maintained a
successful VA Partnership Council, which has been key to our
progress in implementing the Executive Order. To date, we have
successfully stood up over 150 of the 200 labor-management
forums we expect to have at the local and network levels within
the next couple of years.
We are doing what leading private sector firms in America
are doing today to improve performance and achieve positive
results for their shareholders. And we are recognizing what
good leaders and managers have always known: That employees
have more to contribute to the mission when they are asked for
their ideas. The result is greater pride, positive morale, and
better quality.
Our greatest challenge in getting started at VA was making
sure that everyone shared the same understanding of the
Executive Order. To address concerns of both labor and
management, we developed mandatory Web-based training for
managers and supervisors, 25,000 of whom have completed this
requirement. We have also had over 820 labor and management
employees attend joint training outside of VA, which has helped
build trust between them.
In consultation with our labor partners, VA has also
developed metrics to track changes in customer, employee, and
manager satisfaction, as well as organizational outcomes that
can be linked back to the work of our labor-management forums.
Our metrics have been approved by the National Council on
Federal Labor-Management Relations and will be included in our
progress report to the Council in December.
Our bottom line is whether improved labor-management
relationships have a positive, measurable impact on the
delivery of government services--in this case, our Nation's
veterans.
The logic is inescapable. Good two-way communication with
front-line employees helps managers make better decisions, and
the early engagement boosts employee buy-in, which eases
implementation of VA transformation initiatives and avoids
unnecessary litigation.
In sum, Executive Order 13522 has already contributed
directly to stronger labor-management relations at VA. There is
still work to be done, but working with our labor partners will
improve mission outcomes for our veterans by creating a more
efficient and effective environment for all employees.
Finally, we expect the overall improvement in the labor-
management climate to lead to less conflict, fewer grievances,
and smoother, speedier negotiations of needed changes in the
Department.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, this concludes
my remarks. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I
will be happy to answer questions at a later point in time.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Secretary Gould, for
your statement.
And now please proceed, Mr. Tamburrino.
TESTIMONY OF PASQUALE (PAT) M. TAMBURRINO, JR.,\1\ DEPUTY
ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR CIVILIAN PERSONNEL POLICY,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Tamburrino. Chairman Akaka, Ranking Member Johnson,
thank you for inviting the Department of Defense to appear at
this hearing today to discuss our efforts to implement
Executive Order 13522. We have involved our labor partners in
the development of recommendations for the design of a new
performance management system and discussion of methods to
improve the Federal hiring process called ``New Beginnings.'' I
am pleased to share with you DOD's progress, the challenges and
rewards of pre-decisional involvement (PDI), and our way ahead.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Tamburrino appears in the
appendix on page 46.
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The Department of Defense embraces the provisions of the
Executive Order as a means of facilitating the success of our
labor-management objectives. We have established over 450
labor-management forums and are engaging in pre-decisional
involvement at all levels of the Department. DOD has
approximately 450,000 bargaining unit employees in 1,500
bargaining units.
As I am sure you can appreciate, implementing any program,
especially in an organization as complex as DOD, is a daunting
task. Nonetheless, as DOD follows the Executive Order's mandate
to establish labor-management forums, we are experiencing
measurable success. The 450 forums established in the
Department of Defense represent approximately 60 percent of all
the forums established in the Federal Government.
DOD has been engaged with the unions that represent DOD
bargaining unit employees over the past 18 months in the New
Beginnings process. At the outset, the Department recognized
that it needed to rebuild relations with the unions following
the dissolution of the National Security Personnel System
(NSPS). DOD leadership engaged with the unions who enjoy
national consultation rights to repair relationships before
embarking on creating alternative solutions.
Working with the unions, DOD hosted its first New
Beginnings conference in September 2010, bringing together a
broad representation of diverse stakeholder groups. The
conference was a free-flow of ideas, with participants
generating over 800 recommendations with respect to performance
management and over 600 suggestions for the hiring process.
DOD hosted a second New Beginnings conference in February
2011 to launch the design team effort. Following the
conference, three teams--Performance Management, Hiring
Flexibilities, and the Civilian Work Incentive Fund--began
their work in earnest. Each team had approximately 25 members,
all DOD employees, equally represented by labor and management.
Labor and DOD leadership designated their team members, with a
view toward ensuring a diverse group, reflective of all skill
levels and seniorities.
In September of this year, the teams completed their final
recommendations for delivery to DOD leadership. We expect to
deliver a comprehensive report by year's end. While the pre-
decisional process used with our design team has worked well, I
think it is fair to say that the process is challenging for
both management and labor. We need to do more to identify
topics that are worthy of discussion at all levels so that
trends and common best practices can be identified and shared.
Training is also critical to the success of forum
implementation. We have taken advantage of the Federal
Mediation and Conciliation Service Executive Order Train-the-
Trainer program. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, we will continue to
leverage training opportunities, particularly those delivered
by the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
We should be supportive of the time required to allow for
meaningful pre-decisional involvement. This includes time for
both training as well as the actual time to conduct pre-
decisional involvement discussions. However, my experience is
effective engagement between labor and management significantly
contributes to the successful execution of DOD's mission.
The time in pre-decisional discussion may reduce the time
required for formal negotiations. Traditionally, collective
bargaining has involved significant amounts of time required by
labor officials to obtain information relative to the issues at
hand. Involving labor in the development of the solutions from
the onset reduces the time on information gathering, typically
found at the back end of the traditional bargaining model.
As the Department moves forward, we plan to continue our
collaborative effort. The Executive Order requires each agency
to conduct a baseline assessment of the state of labor
relations. The preliminary results of our assessment indicates
that when joint labor-management forums exist and meet
regularly, all parties see the relationship as more positive
and results-oriented.
Thank you again for your interest in this critical area and
for the opportunity to speak with you today. I am pleased to
take your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Tamburrino.
Director Berry, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I
would like to commend you on all of your hard work on this
issue. I know that you believe in effective partnerships
between employees and management in the Federal workforce. Now
that the National Council has been meeting for well over a
year, what do you believe is its most important accomplishment
to date as well as its greatest challenge moving forward?
Mr. Berry. Mr. Chairman, you will remember at my
confirmation hearing we discussed two things that had stymied
human resources for the past 50 years. The first was a hiring
system that was as broken as broke could be. And second was we
did not have strong performance accountability in the Federal
Government. I promised you I would work hard on both of those
issues.
The first one we are moving in the right direction on every
front. Time to hire is down and all of those issues. But I
think the best hope--and it is one that we have just started,
but the one that I believe is going to have the farthest reach
and the greatest impact is the joint effort that we have taken
at the national partnership table between our unions and our
managers on performance management and accountability in that
it will create a new framework for doing this from top to
bottom, from our senior executives to our front-line workers
where we will have accountability, mission alignment, and
strong communication on a regular basis. It sounds so simple
but some of the great reforms are those that are such strong
common sense that you wonder why they have not been done
before.
But the essence of this program being developed from the
bottom up gives it its greatest chance of success, and so I
think, Mr. Chairman, the greatest hope I have is it will allow
us to make solid progress toward an issue that has stymied--and
as we all know, NSPS, Pat could tell you the amount of money
that was spent standing it up and then taking it down.
Homeland Security did the exact same thing. They put in
place a performance management system. They stood it up, and
they had to take it down. A lot of money was wasted.
By doing this and focusing on the performance system in the
right way and building it from the bottom up, we are saving
those millions of dollars, and I believe are going to be doing
it right. And so that is going to be the longest-run
investment.
The second I would say, Mr. Chairman, is innovation, and it
goes, Senator Johnson, to your point. We had a hearing. Pat and
Scott will remember this. We had a gentleman from Pearl Harbor,
from the shipyard in Pearl Harbor, and he said that the people
came to him and said, ``How do we save money?'' to his workers.
He said, ``Well, fire my supervisor.'' They said, ``How do I
save time?'' He says, ``Then my union members will give you a
hundred different ways to do it faster and better.''
Well, of course, time is money, and no one had spent the
time to ask them, ``Do you have a way to do this faster?'' And
when we did at that table, it is amazing what they have done.
Pat can go into more examples of this, but they shaved the time
of which you could turn around a submarine, and every day in
dry dock that you can save translates into millions of dollars
saved for the taxpayer.
By going to the front line, we have been able to do that,
and I think that opening that spirit of innovation, Mr.
Chairman, is going to produce great fruit for the taxpayers for
years to come.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Director Berry.
Pat Tamburrino, I would like to thank you for your nearly
already 30 years of military and civilian Federal service.
Thank you.
Mr. Tamburrino. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. I believe that the National Security
Personnel System ultimately failed because it was imposed on
employees who had very little input into the system that it
designed. I appreciate the attention DOD is paying to
rebuilding strong labor-management relationships.
Do you believe costs could have been saved had DOD engaged
employees in the design of NSPS from the outset?
Mr. Tamburrino. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In hindsight,
absolutely. When I reflect on the past 18 months of New
Beginnings, where we have had at points in time more than 70
labor and management people working in those three design teams
together, they have come to a common understanding of what that
performance management system should look like and the
principles that it should embrace. And you will find that
detailed in our report.
If we had done that in NSPS to begin with, in hindsight, we
would have had the buy-in of both sides of the table, and we
would not have had to spend those resources to go into the
system, train people, only to bring the same 226,000-plus
people back out of the system.
So I find that people as a result of this New Beginnings
process on both sides understand what performance management is
about better. They understand the concerns of both labor and
management. And I can tell you the recommendations we will
bring forward to the Congress are truly joint recommendations
of both parties. And I think based on that alone, we will be
very successful.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Secretary Gould, first, I want to thank you. Through my
service on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, I know how
hard you work to improve the lives of our Nation's veterans.
One of the most important roles of the National Council is to
ensure that forums develop metrics to evaluate their
effectiveness and report on progress.
Please discuss the concept of metrics, their value, and
what recommendations you have for any agency that is struggling
with how to evaluate the effectiveness of their forums.
Mr. Gould. Mr. Chairman, thank you. As a prior businessman,
well, a former executive at the International Business Machines
(IBM), I really appreciate the value of getting your metrics
right and deciding what it is you are going to measure your
success against.
One of the strongest aspects of the Executive Order is its
focus on metrics, and there is a hierarchy of metrics that is
laid out for us. The most important is mission accomplishment.
Are we making a difference for the taxpayers that we serve? And
those things at my own agency include the care and well-being
of the veterans that we serve, and the quality of the benefits
that we deliver.
Next most important is the well being of all employees that
are involved in public service. Better morale and better
employee satisfaction, I think generally translate into an
organization with stronger esprit de corps, morale, and pride.
And, last, the third measure that we are focused on is the
quality of the labor-management relations itself. We have all
seen where union-management relationships do not work
effectively, and I personally believe that a lot of time and
effort can be attenuated in a confrontational process. Our goal
is to move that to more of a collaborative and cooperative
effort.
So our performance measures are focused on the mission, on
achieving results for taxpayers, and then the people who make
the organizations go, and, last, the labor-management relations
itself.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much.
We will have a second round, but at this time we will hear
from Senator Johnson with his questions.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like
to thank all of you for your service.
As I was reading through the written testimony, there were
a couple of questions that popped into my brain. First of all,
it sounds great. As I said in my opening statement it is just
true that working with the people who work with you is going to
improve your effectiveness and efficiency. But the question I
kept coming back to is where can it go wrong.
There was something similar instituted under Bill Clinton,
and President Bush rescinded that Executive Order. Now
President Obama has reissued an even more wide sweeping order.
Why is that? Can you just kind of address the shift? What was
the thinking?
Mr. Berry. Mr. Johnson, I think I will take a crack at
that. I think the President took the approach--it was building
on--not creating something new but building on what was
actually in existence in the law. And bargaining in the Federal
Government is established under the law, and it is very
different from the private sector in that Federal employees
cannot bargain over pay and benefits like they can in the
private sector. They do not have the right strike as they do in
the private sector. So it is a very different labor statute
that governs Federal standards.
But what the President said is, what will make our
bargaining table more productive is the notion of talking
beforehand. And it is certainly something I have found works
well at OPM, that pre-decisional engagement where you can talk
about ideas before you have fleshed them out, before you have
gotten into it, and it gets to just what Pat was saying. You
can identify where the weak spots are, and you can work
together on them rather than sort of crafting it all in
management's mind and then unfurling it and saying this is the
road.
And so the gist of the Executive Order is to drive that
pre-decisional discussion and to create forums where that kind
of conversation could happen. So it builds on the law. It does
not change the bargaining table. It does not change any of the
legal standard. It just says before you get to the bargaining
table, have an open conversation. And that was the spirit that
drove the Executive Order.
Senator Johnson. As I was reading through the materials
here, that seems to be the crux of one of the concerns, the
pre-decision involvement. You said that Federal employees
cannot strike, but they could certainly in that process do
something that is almost similar to a strike and just simply
not allow good ideas to move forward if they have an objection
to them.
Mr. Berry. But, again, Senator, that I think is exactly why
we might actually get somewhere with this new performance
management system, is because they were brought in on the
shaping of it and the understanding of it and helped to design
the structure on which it will be built.
Senator Johnson. They will now be involved in decisions
that are basically outside their bargaining rights, correct?
They are going to be brought in pre-decision in terms of budget
preparation, in terms of potentially taking a look at what the
size of the workforce might be. Isn't that a potential inherent
conflict of interest? And I think that was one of the concerns
of the people as I was reading through the testimony.
Mr. Berry. Well, the law is pretty clear in that they
cannot bargain over pay and benefits. What you are talking
about is bargaining over the technology that might affect
numbers and how that might be implemented.
For example, at OPM we installed a new phone system. We had
a phone system when I got there, they told me the day I arrived
on the job, ``Your phone system could fail at any minute.''
Well, we, management, could have just gone out and picked one,
but we went and instead met with our employees at the table
about this. And we looked at it as an opportunity to expand
telework, and it could use technology more effectively so that
people could work and have distant conferences and we would
save money on travel so that people would not necessarily have
to fly to an area. They could use the technology.
In fact, that has happened, and we have saved about $1.5
million a year by putting in this new phone system. The union
would have had the right to slow that down if we had not talked
to them. They could have taken the approach you said of filing
suits and other things that could have slowed things down. But
because we worked it out at the table with them, they instead
were supportive of it. We got the thing installed on time,
under budget, and it is saving us money each year for the
taxpayers.
So I think it is a great example of the other thing we have
done which is we have controlled the cost on this. We have been
very mindful that people were going to be looking at how much
money we are spending on this. We are spending--the National
Partnership Council (NPC) costs have been almost half of what
they were during the Clinton years. And so we have been very
careful on conserving these resources, spending them wisely,
and using them effectively.
Senator Johnson. We will come back to costs.
Mr. Tamburrino, one of the things, I think, in your
testimony you talked about is Project Moonshine or Moonshine
Initiative. That was prior to these labor-management forums,
correct?
Mr. Tamburrino. The first instance we cite, yes, sir, it
was, approximately 5 years ago. But that project continues
today.
Senator Johnson. OK. Again, so I guess my question is: Why
did we need a sweeping Executive Order to encourage a best
practice where it was already occurring? And why wouldn't other
people in the Federal Government take a look at that example
and say, ``That makes sense. Let us start implementing it the
way we would like to do it in our agency'' ?
Mr. Tamburrino. I think you are right Senator. What we face
in the Department of Defense is we have to come up with
efficiencies. We are under as much budget pressure as any other
Executive Agency, and we find things like the ``Moonshine
Project'', which has had multiple ideas, are a great way for us
to attack those efficiencies.
If only management thinks of the efficiencies, then labor
may or may not be inclined to adopt them. But if I get some of
the ideas from the shop floor or the depot floor, I am much
better off, because the amount of efficiencies we have to come
up with are enormous.
So things like the ``Moonshine Project'' just
institutionalize this partnership, and I think the pre-
decisional involvement allows a lot earlier identification of
the challenges that both labor and management face. I think it
helps us provide a structure to attack the problem.
Senator Johnson. I think that in your written testimony you
talked about one of the concerns was cost.
Mr. Tamburrino. Correct, sir.
Senator Johnson. But you said it was outweighed by the
benefits. But what concerns you about the cost? Do we actually
know the cost of this within the Department of Defense?
Mr. Tamburrino. We are not collecting those metrics right
now, but your questions cause me to pause: Do I need to do
that?
But what we find and what has been relayed to me by my
labor partners is if we wait to talk about the problems that
face us both in the execution of the DOD mission, labor spends
a lot of time trying to find out the facts. And in the pre-
decisional involvement, we expose them to all the facts we
understand a lot earlier, so we get to the substance of how do
we solve this problem as opposed to let us spend hours in fact
finding where guarding the information too closely is not in
anyone's best interest.
But I think to your concern at the end of the day, I think
everybody appreciates, at least in the Department of Defense,
the commander, the commanding officer, the responsibility at
the end of the day rests with that individual. And this pre-
decisional involvement does not change that. It helps inform
that. I think it may help us make better decisions at the end
of the day.
Senator Johnson. OK. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, Senator Johnson.
Director Berry, telework and work-life programs have been
priorities for the labor-management forums as well as for OPM
more broadly. Would you please discuss how improving labor-
management cooperation is helping to advance OPM's telework and
work-life initiatives?
Mr. Berry. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I would say that the
partnership table has allowed us to move much faster and more
effectively in implementing the law that you all passed, the
Telework Enhancement Act. And I believe that as we implement
that and get that stood up and get the technologies in place
and have the employees designated, that is another place where
we are just going to save money and be smarter. People, rather
than having to spend 2 hours each way commuting, can now spend
that time with their families and still deliver 8 hours to the
taxpayer and do it effectively, securely, at their home
location.
So it is a great law that you all put in place, and the
Partnership Council has allowed us to stand it up more quickly,
and I think that had we not had the Partnership Council, it
certainly would have been one you would have had to almost
informally create something like it to allow us to get the
standards in place and to put in place what the law required us
to do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Secretary Gould, I am a long-time supporter of investing in
workforce training and, in particular, the training of
supervisors. As a result of joint efforts between the FLRA and
the FMCS and the Department of Veterans Affairs, thousands of
labor-management officials have been trained on the Executive
Order. They are not represented here today, but for the record,
I want to commend FLRA for its extensive work on training with
very limited resources.
I would like to hear more about these training efforts and
your agency's role in providing such training.
Mr. Gould. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I share your view that
the two most important things that a leader can do in an agency
is develop and train the next generation of leaders behind
them. And the reason why that training is important is directly
related to business value: a more efficient, more effective
organization, and the elimination of waste. It comes from
people who really know their jobs and have gone that extra mile
to learn in the community and draw lessons from the private
sector and other agencies that are doing it well. And that
happens on the job, it happens in a classroom, but it has to
happen.
It is also true that in the environments that we're working
in today, complexity is increasing, and taxpayer demand to
deliver new results is not shrinking. So we have to train our
people to do that.
So it was very natural for us together in the Labor-
Management Council to go figure out a way where we could
leverage training assets across the government, and the first
place that we went to find the richest content, the deepest
expertise, was at FLRA and FMCS. There is no question that
these are the folks that have a lot of the insight, the
professionalism, and the knowledge to make that happen. And we
at VA volunteered to leverage our ability to create Web-based
training using their expertise together. And what we have done
is to create a number of Web-based training courses that really
are an effort for us to work as colleagues in a community and
to support the provision of those training assets that all 51
agencies can now draw upon, and they are posted on the Web and
available for everyone to use.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Director Berry.
Mr. Berry. Mr. Chairman, if I could just also shout out a
thanks not only to those two great organizations but also to
Scott and Secretary Shinseki. This is being done within budget,
this entire operation. There are no separate appropriations for
any of this that is provided. And without the assistance of the
VA to stand up and help us to put these training programs on
the Web, we would not have had the resources to do that.
It was a great partnership in terms of using both the
capacity and the resources to get the job done so we could
reach it out, and then Scott has made that available to all the
agencies of the Federal Government. So rather than having to
have Pat pay twice or someone else to have to pay for the same
thing, we have shared it. And so I think we have been very
careful, and I just want to express my deep thanks to Scott for
his leadership on this important issue, sir.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Mr. Tamburrino, I would like to hear from you on this as
well. I believe that educating and training the DOD workforce,
particularly its supervisors, will be critical to the success
of a new performance management system.
What steps are being taken by agency officials and employee
representatives to ensure that a strong training program is in
place when the time comes to implement DOD's new performance
management system?
Mr. Tamburrino. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question.
Currently, DOD has new supervisory training courses for anybody
who becomes a supervisor for their very first time. So we offer
that across the components.
In the report that we will give you, we emphasize the fact
that one of the keys to successes for our new performance
management system is that supervisors have objectives which
rate them on their ability to supervise; that when we pick new
supervisors, we do that with some conscious activity that the
person that we are about to pick has some aptitude to do it;
and we equip that person with the knowledge, skills, and
abilities to become a supervisor through some formal training.
So I think you will see in our final recommendations we
have current training, but we will bring it to a higher level;
and we will emphasize that part of the supervisory
responsibility is to conduct good dialog with your employees
every day, make sure they understand what their
responsibilities are, and, more importantly, what their
contribution to the mission is, and enable them to make the
most effective contribution possible.
The design teams will write, I believe, at great length on
that particular item in their report because they found that to
be a critical ingredient going forward.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Senator Johnson, do you have any
questions?
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Berry, why in the top three goals of this effort don't
we list cost savings? I understand more effective mission, but
with the fact that we are bankrupting this Nation, why isn't
that an incredibly high-level goal?
Mr. Berry. It is, and, in fact, it is married, Senator,
exactly with the first one. The first metric that we are
looking at is both mission and service delivery, and service
delivery being expressed specifically in metrics of costs,
cycle time, error rate cost savings, return on investment, so
that the breakdown when you get into that, the standards of the
metrics are under one are very strongly focused on time and
dollar savings. It is too early--in other words, I do not have
enough of the reports back in. Those reports are not even due
until the end of this calendar year, so I will not be able to
give you a full analysis of this until later. But, the early
stuff we are seeing, it is definitely showing up on the cost
meter.
Senator Johnson. OK. Again, I realize this is early in the
process and we do not have a whole lot of examples to be
talking about. But, again, I think that the concern is in
bringing basically union negotiators in some respect early into
the decisionmaking process, there is an inherent conflict of
interest there, where, appropriately so, people representing
the union really are there to get larger benefits, higher
wages, higher benefits. How do you guard against that conflict
of interest?
Mr. Berry. Well, two important things, Senator.
First, in the Federal place, in terms of at our bargaining
table, wages and benefits are not negotiable, so that
traditional thing that is in the private sector is not at play
for us.
Senator Johnson. But in the pre-decision involvement, they
are being brought in on the budgetary preparation, correct? As
a matter of fact, isn't it also true that those discussions are
not even open and available under Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) requests?
Mr. Berry. Well, sir, the pre-decisional discussions are
still governed by the law, and the law requires no pay and
benefits, no right to strike and no mandatory union dues. So it
is very different from the private sector negotiations, and
management under pre-decisional waives none of its rights. And
so I think it is very important to remember that at that pre-
decisional tables, managers still reserve all of their rights,
which are very strong under Federal law.
Senator Johnson. Why are those discussions confidential and
not available under Freedom of Information Act requests?
Mr. Berry. Senator, I will have to get back to you, if I
can, for the record on that. As many discussions happen in the
Executive Branch that are not subject to Freedom of Information
Act, not everything in a discussional sense is.
Senator Johnson. That would help allay my fears if those
were available.
Mr. Berry. Yes, sir.
information for the record
In a January 19, 2011 memorandum, the Co-Chairs of the
National Council on Federal Labor Management Relations reminded
heads of departments and agencies that Executive Order 13522
requires agencies to allow pre-decisional involvement with
unions in all workplace matters to the fullest extent
practicable, without regard to whether those matters are
negotiable subjects to bargaining under 5 U.S.C. 7106. The
memorandum noted that one example of an opportunity for pre-
decisional involvement is during the budget development phase.
If management chooses to solicit input from employee
representatives at this stage, the memorandum stresses that
such input should be limited to high-level discussions of goals
and strategies. Additionally, employee representatives may
provide input on implementation of proposals in the President's
budget and on use of budgetary resources to carry out agency
missions; however, pre-decisional input does not obligate
agency management to make specific decisions or take specific
actions.
Release of information during the budget development period
is governed by the Freedom of Information Act, including FOIA
exemptions; the memorandum issued by the President on January
21, 2009 concerning compliance with FOIA\1\; Justice guidance
interpreting the President's memorandum; and section 22 of the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-11,
``Communications with Congress and the Public and Clearance
Requirements,'' which sets out longstanding OMB policies on
preserving the confidentiality of pre-decisional budget
deliberations. Agency budget documents may be exempt from FOIA
depending on the nature of the record requested. In particular,
the deliberative process privilege incorporated within
Exemption 5 of the FOIA may protect agency records which are
pre-decisional and deliberative in nature from public release,
in order to preserve the quality of agency decisionmaking. If
the request falls within one of the categories that OMB has
directed agencies not to produce, the OMB guidance will
control.
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\1\ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the--press--office/Freedom--of--
Information--Act/
Senator Johnson. That would help allay my fears if those
were available.
Mr. Berry. Yes, sir.
Senator Johnson. One thing that surprised me, again,
preparing for this, is I did not realize the extent that the
Federal Government and really the taxpayers subsidize union
activity. Our figures, showing how difficult to get this
information is, are between 5,000 and 10,000 offices are
provided to public sector unions at a cost of about $250
million. I also did not realize that union representatives
basically can work and do their union job on Federal pay, and
that also could be $130 to $25 million worth.
So I want to throw it open to Mr. Gould here. One of the
figures I got was that there are 600 full-time union
representatives working at the VA for 150 hospitals. That is
about four per hospital. Why do we need four union
representatives basically being paid by the taxpayer? Can you
explain that to me?
Mr. Gould. Senator, obviously, cost is an important part of
the mission-oriented metrics that we established as the most
important set of metrics that we are focused on. I think Mr.
Berry gave a good summary of the operational, financial
performance, customer satisfaction, and people-related measures
that constitute a balanced scorecard, and you are focused in on
cost.
What I believe we need to look at is cost and benefit
together, so when we look at our official time, the time that
union managers work under government pay, it is a tiny fraction
of the total amount of labor that is available to our agency.
And what we get in return for that is better-quality decisions
and more streamlined implementation. And if you had a moment, I
could give you two or three examples of where that work, I
believe, has created greater value for the taxpayer.
The first is faster review of appeals claims. Our veterans
are able to appeal claims that they disagree with back to the
government, and 2 years ago we were stuck. It was taking us too
long to process those appeals. We sat down in pre-decisional
involvement with our unions. We came up with a process that
doubled the productivity of the teams on the ground, No. 1.
No. 2, we are working together now to create a new
certification process to ensure the quality of our vocational
rehab counselors. These are individuals who sit down one-on-one
with a veteran and you want to know that they are trained,
certified, and ready to deliver high-quality service.
We needed to develop a new training program and
certification program to do that. We are sitting down with pre-
decisional involvement with our unions, and we are quickly
moving through that.
The last example I would give--you may be aware that
Secretary Shinseki has 16 major initiatives to help transform
the VA. All 16 have engaged pre-decisional involvement. I am
just going to pick one, and it has to do with the
implementation of the new GI bill, which I am sure affects
people in your own home State. That new GI bill says that a
youngster who has gone down range and served 3 or more years in
the military can come back and go to any public or private
institution in America, full tuition, with an additional
stipend for room and board. That system to deliver those
benefits was just an idea 2 years ago. Today there are over
600,000 people who received checks under the new GI bill since
it began and $14 billion worth of tuition has been paid.
We sat down with our union colleagues. We worked through
that using pre-decisional involvement, and the result was no
attenuation, no limitation on our speed to be able to deliver
that new capability.
So those three examples are just ways of my communicating
that it is the benefit net of cost that really is important
here, and unbelievable value is being created by this
initiative.
Senator Johnson. OK. Thank you. I do need to give a shout
out to the Milwaukee VA hospital I visited a couple of times,
really highly qualified individuals really working hard to
deliver services to our veterans. So that is appreciated.
Mr. Gould. Thank you, Senator. That means a lot.
Senator Johnson. If I could just beg your indulgence, one
more question for Mr. Berry. In Ms. Niehaus' testimony, the
representative for the Federal Managers Association (FMA), she
was concerned about the fact that the Federal Managers
Association is not present in some of these labor-management
forums on the agency level. Can you explain why that would be
the case? There seems to be some real conflict on that?
Mr. Berry. Yes, sir. Essentially, on both sides of the
table--we have to leave that up to each of the units to decide,
because under the law it allows clearly for managers and labor
to be at the table. Associations are not clearly defined in the
law, and in some places managers are not comfortable having
another group representing, if you will, management at the
table.
Now, management associations do have the right for
consultation with management, and so separate from the
bargaining process, they do have the ability for consultative
and pre-decisional engagement and involvement. We leave that
sort of to the discretion of each agency to follow to their
best--as long as they are following the law within their units.
But at this point in time, the law does not mandate for the
management associations to be present at the table in such a
way.
And so, we do not have the ability, if you will, at the
Partnership Council to go beyond what the law provides.
Senator Johnson. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Senator Johnson.
I would like to thank our first panel for their testimony
and responses.
I would now like to call up the second panel of witnesses.
On our second panel this afternoon, we welcome Mr. Greg
Junemann, President of the International Federation of
Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE); Mr. William
Dougan, President of the National Federation of Federal
Employees (NFFE); Ms. Patricia Niehaus, President of the
Federal Managers Association; and Mr. George Nesterczuk with
Nesterczuk and Associates. Mr. Nesterczuk also held positions
in the Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan and
George W. Bush Administrations.
It is the custom of the Subcommittee to swear in the
witnesses, so I will ask you to please stand and raise your
right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are
about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Dougan. I do.
Mr. Junemann. I do.
Ms. Niehaus. I do.
Mr. Nesterczuk. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Let the record show the witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
I want you all to know that although your remarks are
limited to 5 minutes, your full statements will be included in
the record.
Mr. Junemann, please proceed with your statement.
TETIMONY OF GREGORY J. JUNEMANN,\1\ PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL
FEDERATION OF PROFESSIONAL & TECHNICAL ENGINEERS, AFL-CIO
Mr. Junemann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. I am
Gregory Junemann. I am the President of the International
Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. I would
like to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member Johnson for
allowing me the invitation to testify today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Junemann appears in the appendix
on page 66.
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Before going further, I would also like to extend my
personal appreciation on behalf of my union to Chairman Akaka.
At the conclusion of this Congress, Senator Akaka will cap off
a distinguished career serving the citizens of Hawaii and this
Nation, which includes, of course, my local. On behalf of IFPTE
Local 121's Local President Jamie Kobayakawa, and IFPTE
Executive Vice President Ben Toyama, again, I would extend my
formal appreciation to you for your service to this Nation.
Of course, the issue before us today deals with labor and
management forums in the Federal Government through partnership
and how effective they have been for taxpayers, workers, and
managers alike. IFPTE applauded the President's Executive Order
13522 when it was initially announced in December 2009, and we
continue to stand by our initial support, and we remain firmly
committed to Federal Government partnerships.
At the same time, I would like to say we are not blindly
led cheerleaders for the Executive Order and its programs;
rather, we like to see ourselves as critiquingly optimistic as
we participate in moving the programs forward.
With the Executive Order, of course, also came the creation
of the National Council on Partnership for Labor and Management
Relations. The Council is compromised of both labor and
management officials, and as President of IFPTE, I am quite
proud to serve on this distinguished panel.
IFPTE represents thousands of scientists, engineers,
technicians, and other highly educated professional employees,
and these are the people who essentially run my union. These
people basically get paid for thinking very deeply. That is
what they do. My members are problem solvers, and it is because
of that we are so strongly committed to partnership within the
Federal Government.
My written testimony shows concrete examples of where
partnership has and continues to produce significant benefits
for taxpayers and Federal workers alike, and my testimony also
points to areas that remain essentially behind the times.
Of course, we all know that the U.S. Government is
operating under a tremendous financial deficit, and in response
to our Nation's looming financial woes, we believe it is
incumbent upon every person within the Federal Government, all
employees and all managers, union representatives alike, to do
everything they can to streamline the efficient operations and,
to quote from Executive Order 13522, ``make a good-faith
attempt to resolve issues concerning proposed changes in
conditions of employment.''
We reject the heavy-handed, top-down, old-school autocratic
style of management that only pretended to work when it seemed
as though money was no object. Instead, we embrace the notion
that a working partnership will much better serve the American
people.
IFPTE remains fully supportive of the Executive Order and
the Obama Administration's commitment to making the Executive
Order work because we believe that there exists concrete
evidence of benefits to taxpayers. This is particularly true,
as has been mentioned, at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, in
the Chairman's State of Hawaii, where, again, as has been
discussed, the implementation of Moonshine Program has saved
tens of millions of dollars for the American taxpayers. The
Moonshine Program, which was presented to the National Council
by IFPTE Executive Vice President Ben Toyama, has, again, saved
the taxpayers millions of dollars and countless man-hours. And
this is only one example of how well partnership works within
the Federal Government.
Along with this partnership at Pearl Harbor, IFPTE is also
proud of the newly established partnership within NASA. I have
a joint letter that is signed by Deputy Director Lori Garver of
NASA and IFPTE National Council President Lee Stone,\1\ and I
would ask to submit that joint letter for the record. It was
only signed on Friday. They were, of course, being scientists,
working out the language of the letter. But it basically
endorses in full their complete support for partnership within
NASA.
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\1\ The joint letter appears in the appendix on page 115.
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Again, it is just starting. That program is just underway,
and cost savings we work will just pile upon themselves as this
goes forward.
Mr. Junemann. It would be nearly impossible for me, again,
as has been discussed, to talk about the benefits of labor-
management partnership without discussing the issue of
training. And, again, we do acknowledge the very, very
important role that was made by the Federal Labor Relations
Authority and the Federal Mediation Conciliation Service, FLRA
and FMCS, in doing joint training for labor and management at--
I do not know how many facilities, but it seems like it is
something like 6,000 labor and management employees have been
trained. This training goes basically two ways. It is done on a
person-by-person basis onsite, and also the training is offered
online. It is a 90-minute training that is available to all
Federal employees. We not only encourage our members, we have
actually put the link of the IFPTE Web site to make sure that
our members have access to it. And, again, I should acknowledge
that this was apparently partially paid for by the Veterans
Administration since FMCS and FLRA and OPM did not have the
money to put this all together.
I am getting ahead of myself a little bit here.
Again, in conclusion, we are strongly grateful to the
President for his continuation of the Executive Order under
partnership. We saw how it worked, when it worked under
President Clinton. We continued to operate--since President
Bush did not exactly prohibit partnership, we continued to
operate some levels of partnership within some agencies, and
then when President Obama reissued the Executive Order, we
stood strongly behind it, and we still do today.
That concludes my remarks, and I would be more than happy
to answer any questions that the Subcommittee has. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Junemann.
Mr. Dougan, will you please proceed with your statement?
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM R. DOUGAN,\1\ PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
FEDERATION OF FEDERAL EMPLOYEES
Mr. Dougan. Thank you, Chairman Akaka and Ranking Member
Johnson, for inviting me to testify today. I am here on behalf
of the National Federation of Federal Employees and the 110,000
Federal workers we represent at 40 different agencies
throughout the government.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Dougan appears in the appendix on
page 76.
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In these lean budget times, downsizing in many agencies is
a fact of life. Belt tightening has become unavoidable, and
accordingly, lawmakers have the critical task of scrubbing the
budget looking for ways to cut costs without adversely
impacting critical agency missions.
But let me make one point absolutely clear. If you are
serious about trimming budgets and finding ways to make
government run more efficiently, you should make certain that
agencies are working with employees to find solutions. It is
employees that do the work every day, and they know better than
anyone how to get the work done better, faster, and more
economically.
In order for the know-how of Federal workers to be
leveraged into government efficiency, they need a legitimate
voice in the process. It is through labor-management forums and
extension of the collective bargaining relationship that
Federal workers are provided that essential voice.
I am pleased to say that the Obama Administration has made
great strides in establishing labor-management forums. His
Executive Order led to a change in policy that is transforming
the labor-management culture throughout the government for the
better.
The re-establishment of labor-management forums has been a
breath of fresh air in a majority of agencies where forums are
established. In these agencies forums are being used to
facilitate smarter, leaner, and more efficient government by
including some of the most important stakeholders of all--the
employees who actually carry out the missions of the agencies.
I can say from my 30-year career as a Federal employee that
labor-management forums do improve agency performance.
Regardless of what an agency's objective is, be it cost
savings, faster processing, better workplace safety, et cetera,
employees are often the best source of information for how to
make the agency work better. Through forums, employees have a
real voice in offering alternatives and ideas on how to better
accomplish the work.
There is no more fertile ground for improved agency
performance than listening to the ideas and concerns of
workers. This is particularly true when unions are engaged
early in the decisionmaking process through pre-decisional
involvement, a key tool that leads to better decisionmaking by
agency leaders.
I can also say from my experience that labor-management
forums save agencies money. By discussing problems early and
allowing the union to share workers' concerns and possible
solutions, it allows management to make better decisions,
thereby saving time and effort involved in implementation.
A major component of that increased efficiency is improved
buy-in from workers. The use of forums can also result in less
need to bargain once an agency decision is made, resulting in
significant potential cost savings. Communication through
forums allows the parties to reach an understanding about why
agencies are taking certain actions and what it means for
employees.
Forums also allow for plans to be modified to mitigate some
adverse impacts on employees when the alternative--failing to
hear workers' concerns--could lead to far greater problems
associated with a workforce that is uninvolved in agency
decisions.
You have heard the saying, ``An ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure.'' The same concept applies to labor-
management relations. Labor-management forums are very
effective at preventing far greater costs that agencies might
incur by not involving employees.
I would like to talk about one specific example of how the
Forest Service labor-management forum improved agency
performance and saved millions of dollars per year. In
partnership, the Forest Service and NFFE collaborated on a
firefighting workforce succession planning process. As a result
of a decision to reclassify many firefighter jobs into a
different job series, the current firefighting workforce faced
the need to be retrained in subjects completely unrelated to
their firefighting duties in order to qualify for their jobs
they had been performing for years.
The union identified that the agency faced spending $15
million per year for the sole purpose of retraining the
workforce to address the unintended technical glitch. This
became a key item for partnership meetings between the NFFE,
Forest Service Council, and the agency. In the end, the agency
realized the tremendous negative impact this was going to have
and wisely committed to changing course. Union and agency
leadership collaborated on an alternative plan that avoids
these negative effects and reduces costs and are working now to
implement it.
Without partnership and the meaningful and detailed
technical collaboration that allowed it to happen, the agency
faced losing a sizable portion of current fire leadership as
well as the pipeline for our leaders of tomorrow. The agency
would also have continued to incur $15 million per year in
meaningless expenses.
This is just one example of the kind of good decisionmaking
and savings that can be achieved through effective labor-
management forums.
I appreciate the Subcommittee's decision to hold a hearing
on this matter, and I thank you for the opportunity to provide
testimony.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for your statement, Mr.
Dougan.
Ms. Niehaus, will you please proceed with your statement?
TESTIMONY OF PATRICIA NIEHAUS,\1\ PRESIDENT, FEDERAL MANAGERS
ASSOCIATION
Ms. Niehaus. Chairman Akaka and Ranking Member Johnson,
since being elected FMA president in March 2010, I have been
serving as FMA's representative on the National Council on
Federal Labor-Management Relations. I would like to thank you
for the opportunity to present our views on the Council and
labor-management relations across the government.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Niehaus appears in the appendix
on page 89.
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FMA was honored to have a seat on the Council from its
onset and viewed our involvement as a testament to the
important role of first-and second-line supervisors in carrying
out agency initiatives and fostering better employee-management
relations. We believe that when you bring all the stakeholders
together, each of whom bring unique and respective viewpoints
to the table, you ultimately end up with a more meaningful,
successful labor-management relationship.
In order to achieve the goals set out in the Executive
Order and ensure the Council tackled all the issues, even the
tough ones, Council members divided into several working groups
over the last year and a half. The subjects examined by these
groups include issues specific to the Executive Order but also
go beyond the order, and working on issues beyond the scope of
the Council's initial charter, stakeholders were able to
collaborate with decisionmakers to make a stronger product and
ultimately a stronger government.
At the national level, FMA has been involved in several of
the initiatives undertaken by the Council, including the
Performance Management Working Group, which is on track to
release its final report at the next Council meeting. Overall,
while we at FMA would have preferred the group tackle the issue
of whether or not the General Schedule speaks to today's
workers and job seekers, we believe the document is a good
first step in ensuring agency leaders take performance
management seriously and ensuring agency leaders consider
strong performance management business as usual. Implementing
an agency culture based on strong performance management must
come from the top down and hold all managers and supervisors
accountable for performance.
In my written testimony, I provide background information
on the partnerships of the 1990s and offer suggestions on how
this Council could improve upon what we learned then. I also
detailed FMA's position on the various subjects the Council is
tackling: permissive bargaining, metrics, and pre-decisional
involvement. In many cases, I am pleased with the progress the
Council has made, and in others, I believe more can be done.
One such issue is the involvement of managers and supervisors
on the labor-management forums. I would like to take this
opportunity to share with you the challenges FMA is
experiencing at the agency level.
To date, over 750 labor-management forums have formed at
the agency or facility level. It is the primary concern of FMA
that management associations have been left out and in some
cases actively excluded from participating in the forums. Under
Title V, agencies are to provide a framework for consulting and
communicating with non-labor organizations representing Federal
employees on matters related to agency operations and Federal
personnel management. Federal management associations,
including FMA, have these consultation rights which were
afforded with the belief that management associations and the
employees they represent have a unique perspective that is not
necessarily represented by agency leadership. Members of
management associations work closely with employees and agency
leadership and are directly affected by the issues addressed in
labor-management forums, and our exclusion means agencies are
missing out on the experience of a crucial stakeholder when
making decisions in these forums.
At the May 2010 Council meeting, SEA and FMA raised the
issue of management association participation in forums, and
many members of the Council expressed support for our
participation. Since that time, FMA and other management groups
have been working with the agencies where we have a strong
membership base to join the newly-formed forums. Unfortunately,
with the exception of one forum where FMA has had a seat on the
local council since 1995, not a single association has been
allowed to participate in the forums, and in some cases our
associations have been actively excluded. More troubling, the
associations are not notified of the forums' decisions in a
timely manner, despite the fact that our members are directly
responsible for carrying out the decisions of the forums.
As pre-decisional involvement, (b)(1) bargaining pilot
programs, and labor-management forums grow in importance,
allowing management associations to participate can be useful
to agencies and union members in ensuring communication at all
levels. Additionally, having the managers' viewpoints and buy-
in expressed early in the decisionmaking process allows
managers to be better equipped when they carry out and relay
these new procedures to their employees.
In conclusion, as we saw in the 1990s and over the last
year and a half, many factors must be met to create cooperative
relationships between management and labor. This is no easy
feat, but the dedication of the Council members to improve
relations through this avenue has proven successful thus far.
However, FMA remains discouraged that our participation is
viewed as valuable on a national level but not at the agency or
local level.
Thank you again for the opportunity to express our views
here today, and I am happy to answer any questions you may
have.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Ms. Niehaus.
Mr. Nesterczuk, please proceed with your statement.
TESTIMONY OF GEORGE NESTERCZUK,\1\ PRESIDENT, NESTERCZUK AND
ASSOCIATES
Mr. Nesterczuk. Thank you, Senator. Good afternoon,
Chairman Akaka and Ranking Member Johnson. Thanks for inviting
me to testify on labor-management forums in the Federal
Government, a subject that I consider both important and
timely.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Nesterczuk appears in the
appendix on page 103.
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Permit me to sound perhaps a discordant note this afternoon
on this subject. Executive Order 13522, issued on December 9,
2009, opened government decisionmaking to non-governmental
entities in an unprecedented fashion. Although the labor
management councils created under the Executive Order are
reminiscent of the partnership councils during the Clinton
Administration, they are Clinton partnerships on steroids. One
has to wonder what management crisis called for such a radical
escalation of the role of Federal unions. Of particular concern
are the pursuit of pre-decisional involvement that expands
union activity into previously non-bargainable areas such as
budget preparation and the allocation of resources that this
entails. At a time of perhaps the most severe peacetime
budgetary constraints we have ever experienced, when Federal
programs face cuts and employee pay has been frozen, it is not
an ideal time to launch a radical initiative that is certain to
drive up the cost of governing. We should be streamlining
government management for greater efficiency and lower cost
rather than overlaying additional burdensome procedures.
Now, of particular concern, pre-decisional involvement, as
promoted under labor-management forums, weakens the chain of
accountability by which agency management is held responsible
for the stewardship of government. The President and his
appointees set priorities for the allocation of resources based
on his publicly stated agenda and congressional intent.
Allowing non-government entities to participate in agency
decisions affecting all ``workplace matters'' is unprecedented,
especially since the scope of issues falling within the rubric
of ``workplace matters'' is undefined and, therefore, open to
the broadest interpretation.
The Office of Government Ethics promulgates extensive rules
to prevent Federal officials from engaging in activities and
contacts that create conflicts of interest or even have the
appearance of conflicts of interest. This is important in order
for the public to retain confidence in their government,
confidence that rules are applied fairly and equally to
everyone, and that decisions are not skewed for the benefit of
special interests.
Unions are a special interest. They exist to maximize the
extraction of benefits from employers on behalf of their
members, and Federal unions were not created for the purpose of
maximizing the efficiency of governance. To place them in a
position where they can influence public policy for their own
benefit is a clear conflict of interest and should not be
tolerated.
And what is a succeeding Administration to do when saddled
with a labor-management arrangement adamantly opposed to its
agenda? The labor-management forums are not good government;
rather, they represent a pandering to special interests.
As far as costs, the new labor regime envisioned in the
forum concept can only drive up costs of government. According
to OPM reports, annual use of official time overwhelmingly--
that is, about 75 percent--goes to general labor-management
issues, not to dispute resolution or bargaining. And the
forums, when fully implemented, will only add more issues to
meet over and discuss.
Since its inception last year, the National Council
overseeing the labor-management forums has already spent over
$1 million in monthly meetings, and this will multiply 20-or
30-fold as individual agencies become more involved.
Unions are already heavily subsidized by the taxpayers for
the use of official time, which, according to recent OPM
reports, compromise about 2 million man-hours per year at a
cost of at least $130 million. The burden of paying for office
space, equipment, and supplies adds an additional $250 million
a year.
The most compelling argument OPM has advanced for this new
labor initiative was the need to ``reset: labor relations after
the ``bad feelings: created by the previous Administration.
Surely there were other, cheaper ways for the Administration to
reach out to this constituency.
What should we do about this? The reset under the forums
unfortunately results in further politicization of the civil
service. Unions in general are very political and highly
partisan. That is their choice. It is also their right to be
so. However, elevating these non-government entities to
partnership status with career managers in government
undermines the perception of political neutrality that the
career civil service has nurtured since its inception over a
century ago. And how is the next administration to deal with
the ``fox in the chicken coop'' that the unions have come to
represent? For the sake of maintaining the neutrality of
Federal civil service, I would recommend that Congress consider
defunding the labor-management forums.
Second, Congress should consider reinforcing the provisions
of Chapter 71 of 5 USC that stipulate non-negotiable agency
rights in order to place these agency rights beyond reach of
temporal political pressures in the agencies.
Finally, Congress should undertake defunding the subsidies
that distort the true worth of unions in the Federal sector.
Federal unions should be subjected to a market test of their
viability and value to Federal employees. Unions collect dues
from their members, and these should be used by unions to pay
their own way. Self-sufficiency will give unions the incentive
to better focus on member services and issues that are relevant
and important to their members, not necessarily the next
election.
I will conclude with that, and I will be happy to answer
any questions that you might have. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Nesterczuk.
Senator Johnson, will you please proceed with your
questions?
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Niehaus, you said that you have been excluded, FMA has
been excluded from these forums, but you have not answered the
question why. Can you just tell me why is that happening? I
would imagine there are probably various reasons at different
agencies.
Ms. Niehaus. We have heard overwhelmingly, not citing
either of my colleagues at the table, that the unions object to
a management association being involved, and that in some
agencies the unions have indicated it would be a deal-breaker
and they would not participate if FMA was allowed to
participate.
Senator Johnson. Can you speculate as to why they would be
objecting to that?
Ms. Niehaus. The only reason I can think of is they would
see it as a second management seat at the table or an
additional management seat at the table; whereas, we would not
be representing the agency, we would be representing the
management personnel who are our members.
Senator Johnson. So it would be a matter of being
outnumbered.
Ms. Niehaus. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Mr. Dougan or Mr. Junemann, would you have
a comment on that as to why?
Mr. Dougan. Yes, I think the basic issue is labor-
management forums are essentially an extension of the
collective bargaining agreement between labor and management.
It is a vehicle that we can use to enhance our collective
bargaining relationship, and it allows us the ability to talk
as equals at the table in a pre-decisional mode, to discuss
issues which management then is going to exercise their
management right to make that decision. So I want to make that
point clear. There has been, I believe, some misclarification
of exactly what pre-decisional involvement is.
Pre-decisional involvement is not co-management; it is not
the case that labor is making decisions with management in a
labor-management forum in a pre-decisional involvement setting.
Pre-decisional involvement is nothing more than communication
and sharing information, sharing concerns, sharing
alternatives, sharing options between labor and management to
hopefully better allow management to make a more informed and
better decision. It is management's decision to make. It is not
labor's decision to make.
Senator Johnson. Well, let me interrupt you here. So,
again, the purpose for these things, as is being laid out here,
is just it is kind of warm and fuzzy, we get everybody at the
table that can really help improve effectiveness and
efficiency. But we have really the first-line supervisors that
unions are basically excluding from that process. Does that not
run counter to the stated purpose of the forums?
Mr. Dougan. As I stated before, by law there is a different
relationship that exists between labor and management as
opposed to between management and other employee groups, which
Ms. Niehaus' group is one of many. There are many employee
groups within any Federal agency that represent various groups
of employees. They are not sanctioned and do not exist by law.
They exist through agency policy and through the agency's
willingness or unwillingness to recognize them as a group to
communicate with and to seek input. But the problem with labor-
management forums at a local level, that is where the rubber
meets the road. That is where the decisions get made that
ultimately are going to impact on the need to either
collectively bargain--to bargain further on those decisions or
not bargain further on those decisions. And I believe it puts
labor in a difficult place when there are parties other than
labor and agency management sitting at the table discussing----
Senator Johnson. Well, you seem to be confirming my worst
fears that this really is a quasi-negotiating session as
opposed to something else.
Mr. Nesterczuk, you made the statement that these forums
will certainly drive up costs. Can you explain why you feel
that way? Why are these forums absolutely certain to drive up
costs?
Mr. Nesterczuk. The more issues that you put before the
unions, the more official time will be used to deal with those
issues, the more opportunities they get to become involved with
policy matters, policy decisions in the agency, the more staff
will be assigned to those matters, all on official time. These
are not things that happen for free. There may not be
additional budget allocations for that purpose, but those are
funds that are taken away from other activities, activities
that are supposed to be directed at delivering services to the
taxpayer.
Senator Johnson. So you are saying that these forums
basically open up a can of worms where they will basically
metastasize in terms of maybe four or five issues become 20
become 100?
Mr. Nesterczuk. Absolutely.
Senator Johnson. That is your primary concern?
Mr. Nesterczuk. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Mr. Junemann, you look like you are
anxious to hop in here.
Mr. Junemann. I have that look on my face, and it has
nothing to do with----
Senator Johnson. The Brewers. [Laughter.]
Mr. Junemann. First of all, on the question with the
management associations, our union does not really have a stand
on that. In fact, I heard about that issue the first time this
morning, that this was an issue. Obviously, they have a
responsibility to advocate for management, for front-line
supervisors. We have a different one. Ours is, I think more
governed by laws than theirs. But they have a responsibility to
theirs, and we have not taken a stand like I have heard this
morning.
On this thing about that these forums will lead to more--
sort of like marijuana leading to stronger stuff or something,
right? That these forums will lead----
Senator Johnson. I did not say that.
Mr. Junemann [continuing]. To more problems. [Laughter.]
I know. I kind of did. No, I did. I have that way of
talking. But I really see just the opposite. As a matter of
fact, in talking to our folks at NASA--I just met with our NASA
Council people last week. They had issues--for instance, there
was--and I would like to tell you exactly. I could get it for
you, the issues behind it. There was a grievance at Goddard
Space Flight Center, Goddard Research Center, that has been
going on since the mid-1990s. And it is a grievance and it is a
charge and it is a suit, and it goes on and on and on. And they
brought it up at a labor-management forum, and it is done, it
is resolved, and it will never be brought up again.
Senator Johnson. OK.
Mr. Junemann. This is supposed to be solving problems, and
that is what it is for.
Senator Johnson. OK. Because my time is running short in a
number of ways, let me just quickly go to a broader question
directed to the union representatives here, because it does
strike at the heart of my concern in terms of the
politicization of management and really how effective are these
going to be at trimming costs, where we ran a $1.3 trillion
deficit last year, we are borrowing $3.5 to $4 billion a day.
But the fact of the matter is that the taxpayer really through
payment to Federal workers and those wages are turned to a
certain extent into dues and those dues are funneled back into
political contributions. In the last 20 years, labor unions
have contributed $384 million into Federal campaigns in terms
of Federal public employee unions--$45 million from the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME), $31 million from the National Education Association
(NEA), $29 million from the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU). Ninety-five percent of those contributions go to
one party, the Democratic Party. So you can maybe understand
how there may be just a little concern about the conflict of
interest of unions being at the table when certainly one party
is trying to instill some fiscal discipline in this country. So
I guess I will just open that up.
Mr. Dougan. First I would like to address the issue of
union dues going to political candidates. That is absolutely
not correct. There is not one dime of union dues that is spent
in political contributions to any candidate from any party.
Those dues cannot be spent by law----
Senator Johnson. Where is that $384 million going in terms
of Federal campaigns then?
Mr. Dougan. Our individual members, should they decide to
make political contributions, are certainly free, just like any
other citizens of the country, to make contributions either
individually or through a PAC fund that many unions have, just
like other corporations, to help support the candidates. But it
is not from dues money. It is from their own contributions
should they so choose to do that. There is no decision on the
part of union leadership as to how much money will be
contributed. It is up to each individual member whether they
want to contribute something or nothing.
Senator Johnson. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, thanks for indulging me so I could leave
early. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. I have a question for both Mr. Junemann and
Mr. Dougan. As we have discussed today, DOD has worked closely
with employees throughout the process of designing a new
performance management system, a critical difference from NSPS.
Do you believe the process for designing the new system will
improve its implementation? Mr. Junemann.
Mr. Junemann. Yes, Senator. Absolutely I do believe that it
will be improved simply because when the employees are involved
at the inception point of the performance management system,
when they are designed and putting it together, they will be
invested into it because of the resources, simply because of
the time and energy that they have put into the program, it
will be more successful simply because they will be
participating in it.
To Senator Johnson's question--and I am sorry he had to
leave--my union is very concerned, as am I, on cutting costs at
every level of the Federal Government. We think that is one of
the primary reasons to have an Executive Order on partnership,
because I think it is up to the President, it is up to the
Congress to go the Federal employees and say, ``It is your duty
as workers and as patriotic citizens to cut costs wherever we
can.'' We are very, very concerned with shipyards potentially
being closed, with bases potentially being closed. So each one
of these people, each one of these leaders wants to make sure
that they have wrung out every nickel out of their operation,
and partnership is the best way to do that.
But on your question of the workplace performance
initiatives, certainly if the unions are involved--and, again,
my union does not bring in professional negotiators into these
talks. They bring in just everyday workers who get elected to a
responsible position, and they go into these talks, and based
on their members' input, that is where these initiatives and
programs get designed. And once they get designed with these
people's input, then they are invested and they are going to
make them successful.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Dougan.
Mr. Dougan. Thank you, Senator. Before I answer your
question, I would like to be granted just a moment to speak to
a quote that Senator Johnson gave in his opening remarks. He
quoted a letter from FDR where he said,``. . . the process of
collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be
transplanted into the public service.'' I know this letter well
because the letter hangs outside my office, the original
letter. This letter was addressed by FDR to Luther Steward, the
president of NFFE, my union, in 1937. And Senator Johnson
accurately quoted FDR, but he did not present the quote in its
proper context.
When FDR said ``collective bargaining, as usually
understood,'' he was talking about the right to strike. There
was no collective bargaining at that time that did not include
the right to strike, and the portion of the letter that he did
not quote talks about ``as usually understood,'' meaning that
public workers would not be allowed to strike. That is what FDR
was talking about and that is what he meant by collective
bargaining, as usually understood, not translating to the
public sector, and nothing else. And I just want to set the
record straight on that.
But to address your question, I think, what we saw with
NSPS, the National Security Personnel System, and what we have
seen with the New Beginnings effort in DOD is night and day.
And just to set the record straight, Mr. Nesterczuk wrote a
report in 2001 called ``Taking Charge of Federal Personnel,''
and this report served essentially as the template, as the
guiding document for the Department of Defense to inflict the
National Security Personnel System upon the DOD workforce and
the rest of the Federal Government.
This report recommended bypassing workers and their union
in order to give Federal executives full authority to move
those who remained into a highly subject merit-based pay
system. Those recommendations in that report were followed
almost verbatim in the creation of NSPS. As a result, NSPS
ultimately failed, was seen as an abject failure, was seen as
essentially the largest failed personnel system effort. It has
proved to be the biggest waste of taxpayers' money in personnel
reform history. And there are really two reasons for that:
One was because the employees and their elected
representatives were completely cut out of the process. The
process and the system lacked transparency. Nobody could figure
out how it worked. Therefore, there was no buy-in and people
were suspect and people just did not know how this thing
worked. And so it is hard to have credibility when you do not
understand the system. And ultimately it was determined that
the system was discriminatory. It discriminated against varying
classes of employees.
These are fundamental problems that ultimately made NSPS
unsalvageable, and I would note that the Chairman of this
Subcommittee at the time, Senator Collins, was a key supporter
in calling for the full repeal of NSPS. So this is not a
partisan issue. This is not a Democrat-versus-Republican issue.
This is doing what is right, as opposed to what we did in New
Beginnings, a completely transparent process. Labor was brought
in early, fully engaged, was given an equal seat at the table.
We were able to put--much like Mr. Junemann, all of labor
offered folks from the field that actually know the work, that
live under these rules and these systems, and offered them as
the team members of these work groups. And because of that, we
have a product that can stand the test of whether it is
transparent or not. We have a product that can be supported by
labor as well as management and hopefully can be supported by
Congress when they get the results in the next few months.
Mr. Nesterczuk. Senator, surely I could be given an
opportunity to respond? May I comment on your question?
Senator Akaka. Yes, please comment.
Mr. Nesterczuk. Mr. Dougan's points sort of bring to kind
the maxim that in this town the difference between truth and a
lie is that you have to tell the lie more often before people
accept it.
As far as the status of NSPS, it was not a failed system.
It was a system that was meant to serve the Department of
Defense, at its own choosing, based on 25 years' prior
experience with demonstration projects. They knew fully well
what they were doing. Employees were beginning to learn it. We
knew from experience it takes 3 to 5 years for the workforce to
accept such a significant change in a personnel system, and
that was based on the experience in the various demonstration
projects, 3 to 5 years.
So the unions were very anxious to kill that thing before
it ever reached the 5-year maturation point where employees
were buying in, and the degree of buying was increasing
exponentially at the time that the plug was pulled on NSPS.
The notion that only a system that is blessed by the unions
can flourish in the Federal Government is what has kept us
working with a Model T compensation system--and that is the
General Schedule--at a time when we have hybrid engines
available to power our workforce. The initiative today on the
part of the Councils to build a new personnel management
system, a performance management system built on that rickety
structure of the General Schedule is doomed to fail.
Yes, I wish them well in their efforts. They will spend
gross amounts of money in the process. They will foist this on
a workforce that will have to accept it. No question of that.
But it will not have the beneficial results that NSPS was
beginning to provide the Department of Defense.
If the Administration had been really honest and sincere in
their desire to explore performance management, they would have
done their best to keep NSPS going to learn from it. If there
were faults and flaws in it, there was a wonderful opportunity
to learn from it in a system that was unique at the time--over
200,000 employees covered across various kinds of DOD
activities from coast to coast. We could have learned a lot,
and instead you killed it. And now you have to start from
scratch, again falling back to ancient technology. I wish you a
lot of luck with that. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Ms. Niehaus, thank you for your comments about the
importance of training to effective implementation of labor-
management partnerships and of supervisor training more
broadly. As you know, improving training is a priority for me.
Ms. Niehaus. Yes, sir.
Senator Akaka. I would like to hear your thoughts on the
training that is being provided on implementation of the
Executive Order. What have your members told you about training
they have received on this issue?
Ms. Niehaus. In that particular respect, I can also speak
from personal experience. My day job is as the Labor Relations
Officer at Travis Air Force Base; I am not expressing DOD or
Air Force opinions but strictly my own. I attended the FLRA
training with our local union president from the installation,
and I was very impressed with the training provided by the FLRA
regional director and his staff for the implementation of the
Executive Order. It was very thorough and included exercises
that were very helpful to understanding the various aspects of
this.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Mr. Junemann, I am proud of the Moonshine Program to
improve collaboration and innovation at the Pearl Harbor Naval
Shipyard and the positive results it is achieving for our
military and taxpayers.
What lessons does the Moonshine Program hold that could be
replicated in other locations where partnerships may not be as
advanced?
Mr. Junemann. Well, I think the lesson is--I will quote
Scott Gould, what he said at one of our National Partnership
Council meetings, a very short statement. He said, ``This stuff
works.''
I think the lesson that can be learned is they have very,
very short meetings, unlike what has been stated by some of the
detractors of partnership and its progresses. They have very
short meetings. They have 1-hour meetings on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday morning, and those are only to talk about
efficiency, productivity, and safety. That is it. And then they
go forward, and they get it done.
As Director Berry said in his testimony--and you know Ben
Toyama. It was Ben Toyama who made that statement, and what he
said was, ``If you ask one of my members how can I save some
money, they will say, `Get rid of my boss,' '' because they do
not really know. That is not their job. But if you say how can
I save some time, they have a hundred ideas.
So the lesson that can be learned and the lesson that can
be replicated is--and this is the thing that I really think
that the Subcommittee should look at, is exactly what you are
saying, Senator Akaka. We should take the benefits that have
happened under Moonshine at Pearl and say, ``Why isn't it being
done at Philly? Why isn't it being done at Norfolk and at
Portsmouth?'' And call in the decisionmakers and say this is
makes a whole lot of sense, that the workers, the stewards, the
supervisors, the managers get together for one hour, one short
hour, and say let us get this done better than we have ever
done it before. And you have seen the statistics, sir. The
benefits, the efficiency, the man-hours that have been saved,
the millions of dollars are incredible. And when we are facing
the sort of deficits that this Nation is facing, those things
should be capitalized upon.
And, Senator, I agree with you, they should be replicated,
and where they are not, really the question should go out to
the players involved and say, ``Why aren't you doing this?''
Because that is actually what Ben Toyama from Pearl Harbor
Naval Shipyard is asking others: Why isn't this being done
elsewhere? So, Senator, I really believe it should.
If I could just make a statement about FMA, it seems to me
that the reason that they have a separate agency for managers
is because, I guess according to law, you cannot belong to
unions. Even that needs to be changed. [Laughter.]
Senator Akaka. Mr. Dougan, your written testimony discusses
an Inspector General report which found that a firefighting
workforce succession planning process developed through
partnership between your union and the U.S. Forest Service
saves $15 million per year. Will you please describe this
planning process and how it saves taxpayers' money?
Mr. Dougan. Sure. As I stated in my oral testimony, what
happened in the Forest Service was there was an attempt to
``professionalize'' the wildland firefighting workforce in that
agency. And as a result of that decision, there was a
determination made that many of the fire leadership positions
within the agency needed to be in a professional occupation
series. Much of the current firefighting workforce is in a
technical series.
Professional occupations require positive education
requirements, and in the case of the series that they were
looking at for these firefighters, it required everyone that
was in one of those positions to have a bachelor degree or
higher with a minimum of 24 hours in very specific types of
college course work. Much of the firefighting workforce comes
up through the ranks, and basically their university is out on
the fire lines. Many of these people do not have college
educations. Many of them have taken some college classes but do
not hold degrees. But yet they have been doing the work and
leading the firefighting efforts in the Federal Government for
a number of years.
As a result of that reclassification, there was a
determination made that these people had to be sent back to
school to get that training in order to qualify for those jobs,
and that is where the $15-million-a-year figure comes from. It
is the cost of sending these folks back to school either
through distance learning or actually physically having to go
enroll in colleges and take classes in order to qualify for the
very jobs that they have been doing for, in many cases, the
last 30 or 40 years of their careers.
So the union had a concern over that because, obviously, we
represented many of these people, and it is very difficult for
people, unless you are very early in your career and you are
not married and you do not have kids, to just pick up all your
belongings and go back to school. So we had concerns about how
we were going to make this happen, and when we got to looking
into the facts, there were other opportunities, it appeared to
us, other types of job series that they could be placed into
that would meet the agency's requirements of a more
professional workforce, but yet the training that they would
receive would be more fully directed at the work that they are
actually doing in firefighting. And so we proposed that change
to agency management and worked with OPM and working with many
Members of Congress, many congressional committees, to drum up
support, and we are finally able to get the support in Congress
and through OPM that we needed to change the job series from a
professional series to an administrative series, which
eliminated the positive education requirement, the degree, and
yet protected ensuring that these folks still maintained the
knowledge, skills, and abilities that they needed to do their
jobs. It was an effort that took several years. It was carried
on through the Forest Service Partnership Council and through
various work groups that were spun off of this Council.
It is one of many examples, I think, across government
where there are positive results being seen from the labor-
management forums. In many cases I think labor-management are
sometimes our own worst enemies because we do not do a good job
of championing these victories when we have them and telling
these stories. And it should not take a hearing like this for
this kind of word to get out there to folks about some of the
benefits of labor and management collaboration.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much. I want to thank
the witnesses for attending this hearing. As we have heard
today, the Federal Government can increase productivity and
reduce costs through the establishment of effective labor-
management partnership. I am also pleased that DOD is engaging
with the employees and their representatives in a genuine
collaboration to design a new performance management and hiring
system. Employee buy-in will reduce costs and make the new
system more effective.
I look forward to working with all of the witnesses in the
coming months on the important issues we discussed today.
Again, thank you for being here.
The hearing record will be open for one week for additional
statements or questions other Members may have pertaining to
the hearing.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:29 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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