Appeals Process Also Sketched

One aspect of the announcement reaching beyond the labor-management arena involves DoD’s plans for creating an alternative system for hearing challenges of personnel decisions. The agency proposes to create a Defense Labor Relations Board of either five or seven members-some of them chosen by unions-that would replace not only the grievance/arbitration route now open to union-represented employees but also the administrative grievance route that mostly involves relatively minor actions of employees whether union-represented or not, as well as challenges to more significant actions before Merit Systems Protection Board administrative judges and then before the three-member MSPB board. Although the planning document doesn’t mention it, the law authorizing the new DoD personnel system gives employees a right, although limited, to appeal decisions by any internal DoD appeals system to the MSPB board.