Federal Manager's Daily Report

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The FLRA has released a new strategic plan covering the next five years that among other things includes a goal that the agency will “develop and provide tools and resources to enable the parties to prevent or more effectively and efficiently resolve their labor-relations disputes and improve their labor-management relationships.”

The plan was published just as those relationships have been severely strained following the Trump administration’s issuance of executive orders limiting the scope of bargaining, restricting official time and denying unions traditional free use of office space in federal buildings. After a federal court blocked those provisions, the dispute shifted to whether agencies are complying with the court order.

The FLRA said that it will maintain and expand its written resources and training programs to educate both management and unions on their rights and obligations under federal labor law. It further intends to “identify and offer targeted assistance to parties with significant labor-management challenges,” including “offering training to parties on particular topics that have given rise to frequent ULP charges, negotiability disputes, or arbitration exceptions.”

“Other types of assistance might be most appropriate for parties experiencing broader labor-management challenges. For parties involved in complex representational matters, targeted assistance can include conducting conferences with the parties to assist them in identifying and, if feasible, resolving relevant issues,” it says.

“Parties are best served when they have a clear understanding of how long it might take the FLRA to process cases,” it adds. “The FLRA therefore will set its standards for timeliness in a way that gives parties a reasonable expectation as to the duration of the FLRA determination process. This requires the use of simple, straightforward metrics for understanding how long it might take to resolve a given matter before the agency.”