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?
In some cases, management wanted to hand out awards to their friends or to meet quotas. Some times employees have a better notion of who actually does the work.
ReplyDeleteDeciding who should receive awards is problematic no matter who makes the choices. While it is true that sometimes co-workers have a better notion of who is performing well awards came to mean nothing when everyone received one. It began to be treated like a bonus instead of a recognition of superior performance. Some offices tried having the staff vote for awards in the 902s and it became a popularity contest. I have seen managers make good choices and bad choices. Awards can recognize different things - from expertise to volume, from flexibility to reliability.
ReplyDeleteoops - that's '90s, not 902s.
ReplyDeleteI think the fair thing with awards is to put people in a booth for a minute with money blowing around and you try to grab as much as you can. Everyone gets a turn.
ReplyDeletePut in a few specially marked bills that could be traded for a step increase.
Then no one can blame the management or co-workers for playing favorites in dishing out the awards or bitching because someone got a bigger award.
Been told that the word from the transition team is that some version of Partnership is coming and to come to grips with it.
ReplyDeleteI have 15 years of federal service and I believe awards for government employees are counterproductive. As the article says, they are either worthless, or, as a poster has said, they go to management pets. I say abolish awards. Let all of us as public servants do the job we are hired for and stop worrying about awards.
ReplyDeleteNow, a more interesting issue is whether the Tadpole (commissioner Astue) will stay on when unions regain their voice. He has fostered a personality cult in which management fails to even observe basic courtesy to unions. I wonder if the Quislings in Baltimore who now massage that massive ego will abandon his ship.
Who appoints the Inspector General? Who appoints his second in command? The MSPB? Impasse panels? If he can't control these folks, I suspect he will leave