Among the initiatives in the report of the administration’s Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment is reinstating a program for cooperative labor-management “forums” and for “pre-decisional involvement” by unions in many workplace policies beyond those that are formally negotiable.
That would be the latest in a back-and-forth that started with a similar policy directive in the Clinton administration that was repealed by the Bush administration, then reinstated by the Obama administration only to be repealed by the Trump administration. The last of that series did allow agencies to continue those practices although it strongly discouraged their use.
The Biden administration has not overridden that order—unlike its repeal of many of its predecessor’s other workplace policies—although last May it reminded agencies that they still may use them. The report says that DHS, for example, has started reestablishing some at both the department and component levels.
However, the report recommends repealing the Trump order and replacing it with a memo strongly encouraging agencies to follow those practices. Long-term, it says the administration should “determine a path forward to institutionalize labor-management forums, PDI of unions in agency decision-making, and labor-management cooperation in the federal sector, including through a new potential executive order.”
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