Posts tagged Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Federal Employee Union Membership is Up 20%
March 29, 2023 // The task force asked federal agencies to foster collaborative relationships with their union partners, involve labor organizations in predecisional policy discussions, and remove barriers from unions trying to increase their membership or organize new bargaining units. The group recommended that the Office of Personnel Management instruct agencies to provide information on whether job openings are represented by unions and encourage agencies to provide unions more opportunities to communicate with new hires. In a blog post last week, the vice president’s office announced that just a year after agencies began implementing the task force’s recommendations, the initiative is already paying dividends: over the last year, nearly 80,000 federal employees have joined a union, increasing the total number of dues paying union members at federal agencies by 20%. And in the private sector, petitions for union representation increased 53% from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2022, while overall union membership grew by 273,000 last year.
White House touts ‘significant results’ of task force after 80,000 feds opt to join a union
March 21, 2023 // Federal unions saw a roughly 20% increase in bargaining unit membership governmentwide, with close to 80,000 feds joining a union between September 2021 and September 2022, according to a March 17 update from the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. The Biden administration credited the “significant results” to the work of the task force, a group that President Joe Biden created through an April 2021 executive order seeking to strengthen collective bargaining rights for federal employees. Following the initial executive order, the task force, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, laid out 70 recommendations to improve labor-management relations for the federal workforce. Similar to the first priority of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the task force said it aims to position the federal government as a model employer, including through worker empowerment.
Op-ed by Marty Walsh: Protecting the Right to Organize Act will help unions win their first contracts
November 28, 2022 // The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act is strongly supported by the Biden-Harris administration. Introduced by Sen. Patty Murray and co-sponsored by Sen. Maria Cantwell, the act would establish a mediation and arbitration process for reaching a first contract agreement. The PRO Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in March 2021, is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Longshoremen strike CSA operations at the Port of Mobile after mediation falls apart
November 28, 2022 // The International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1410 began striking CSA Equipment Company’s breakbulk operations at the Port of Mobile Tuesday, less than a month after the two sides agreed to federal mediation. There are four main issues at the heart of negotiations between the local chapter of the union and the stevedoring company: line handling (tying up vessels), retroactive payments to the union’s pension plan, the number of workers per unit and jurisdiction over stevedoring operations at the port. Currently, non-union workers can tie up vessels that union workers are contracted to unload with CSA, something that the union wants to change. Bass says the union wants to control line-handling for any vessels that they unload, which the union says was the case in the past. Line-handling control means more man-hours for union workers, Bass says, which is important because stevedoring work isn’t consistent. SSA Marine and Cooper/T. Smith,
Longshoremen’s union and CSA agree to mediation, holding off strike
October 24, 2022 // “We’re making the attempt one more time, with the federal mediator,” Mark Bass, president of the ILA Local 1410, said. The two parties have agreed to work with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) to mediate the disagreement and agree to a new contract. Last week, the Lede reported that Local 1410 had voted to strike CSA operations, after union membership voted not to accept the company’s contract offer in September.
City New Flyer Workers Unionize
August 25, 2022 // The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service verified that a majority of the workers signed union representation cards on Thursday, and New Flyer has agreed to recognize the union. IUE-CWA now represents more than 50 workers who make components for New Flyer buses, including electric buses. The workers join more than a thousand workers at two New Flyer facilities in St. Cloud and Crookston, Minn. who are represented by the union. New Flyer has a contract with the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority requiring that they manufacture in New York. New Flyer workers are currently building dozens of zero-emission, battery-electric buses that will be used in New York City. Carl Kennebrew, Erica Ericson,
House-Passed ‘America COMPETES Act’ Contains Union Neutrality, Card Check and Binding Arbitration
February 7, 2022 // The COMPETES Act contain provisions of the PRO Act, as well as the now defunct Employee Free Choice Act