Federal union representatives and agency management officials have differing views of an administration initiative intended to spur them to greater cooperation, according to a report presented to the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations.
A report presented by a subcommittee at the most recent council meeting focused on perceptions of “pre-decisional involvement” of unions in workplace decisions.
It showed that more than half of union reps believe that such discussions are not conducted often enough, a view held by only a fifth of managers. Labor reps also more often viewed the topics of such discussions as very important while management was more likely to view them as only fairly important.
Views also diverged on questions that in effect amounted to an assessment of management’s commitment to truly engaging with unions in the decisional process. Forty-four percent of managers said that unions became involved about the same time as agency officials or after agency reps had only some discussions on a topic, but only 22 percent of unionists believed that labor’s involvement began that early.
In contrast, 37 percent of labor reps believed that their involvement began only after a tentative or even final decision had been made by management, while only 11 percent of management officials held that view.
Similarly, 32 percent of labor reps said they were brought into the process only after most of the important decisions already had been made, versus only 1 percent of managers who said the same.
