Unions To Have More Clout Under Obama

From the Federal Times:

For eight years, federal unions have felt left out in the cold with an administration clearly at odds with organized labor. Now that Barack Obama is on his way, unions expect a warmer relationship — and more clout. ...

For federal managers, the change will mean the likely return of the Clinton-era formalized labor-management partnerships between senior government officials and union leaders. Those were dissolved within weeks of the Bush administration taking power....

Greg Heineman, a district manager for the Social Security Administration in Norfolk, Neb., who is also president of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, worries that managers could lose some important authorities if partnerships aren’t implemented correctly.

“If we go back to the partnerships, it should be clearly defined what areas are open for partnership discussions and which areas are still management’s prerogative,” Heineman said. “Under [President Bill] Clinton, at least from the feedback we got from our members, a lot of the problem was that it wasn’t clear what the rules were.”

Heineman said unions sometimes had too much say in management decisions, such as choosing exceptional SSA employees for financial awards. SSA’s partnership allowed the American Federation of Government Employees to help decide who received awards, and Heineman said the union pushed to hand out smaller awards to more people. Managers wanted to hand out bigger awards to only the best employees, he said.

“It took the ability away from managers to reward employees doing an outstanding job, and the awards were more flat,” Heineman said.

If partnerships return, Heineman said managers will welcome the opportunity to exchange ideas with employees and unions. But he wants to make sure managers retain important authorities, such as the ability to assign work to employees as they see fit.

Of course, the extent of the President's ability to order an independent Commissioner of Social Security to cooperate with employee unions is unclear. Will Commissioner Astrue discover the indepedence of his office after President Bush leaves office and, if so, what the wouldCongress and President Obama do about the exercise of such indepedence?