The National Security Personnel System, which will cover 650,000 civilian employees, intends to replace the standard 15-grade General System pay schedule with one that rates employee pay on the basis of performance.
The new rules would curtail or even eliminate the bargaining power of unions, making it easier for the Pentagon to hire, promote, and fire employees.
Now, five federal employee unions, foremost of which is the American Federation of Government Employees, will file a lawsuit in federal court, challenging the Pentagon plan.
The unions believe that the new plan will eliminate their ability to engage in collective bargaining, which is a violation of federal law. A similar law suit was brought against Homeland Security and has delayed the implementation of its new workplace plan.
The successful implementation of this plan portends a new workplace environment and rules for all civil service employees. This is all part of the trend of making employees responsible for their own efforts.
A New York security firm, Guardsmark, established a rule prohibiting employees from fraternizing on duty and off duty, from dating one another, and from forming friendships with a client’s employees and with co-employees.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed an unfair labor practices charge with the NLRB, claiming Guardsmark’s employees’ rights had been violated. Much to everyone’s surprise, the NLRB ruled in favor of the Guardsmark rule. It said that the company’s rule would be interpreted as a ban on dating, not on forming friendships.
The NLRB rules on laws, not the wisdom of strategies and tactics. In order to keep employees productive and reasonably happy on the job, it is important for management not to impose rules that will lead to strikes, slow downs, or walkouts. No dating policies may be effective for avoiding sexual harassment suits, but they have to be instituted as diplomatically as possible and with the cooperation of employees. Employee participation in management decisions is often the key to a happy and productive workforce.
When the Teamsters Union picketed Anheuser-Busch this summer, it violated federal labor, said the NLRB.
For five months, Teamsters Local 600 has been striking the Lohr Distributing Co., which is the exclusive distributor of Anheuser-Busch products in St. Louis. The Teamsters are boycotting Lohr, which means a boycott of Anheuser-Busch products.
The union has violated a law prohibiting pickets against companies not directly involved in a labor contract dispute, according to the NLRB. The Teamsters, which had displayed signs calling for a boycott near Anheuser-Busch headquarters, will be asked to stop.
Dan McKay, the local Teamsters president, said employees would stop if their activities are illegal. The NLRB is continuing to investigate four additional charges that Anheuser-Busch filed against the Teamsters.
This is a further example of aggressive union tactics that go beyond the bounds of accepted labor relations law.
Now that General Motors has reached an agreement with the UAW to cut $1-billion in annual health-care benefits for more than 750,000 workers, retirees, and their families, there will be a concerted effort by other companies facing financial problems to re-negotiate the health-care benefits of their workers.
This represents a significant shift in strategy for unions, which had once demanded full and cost-free health-care benefits for their workers. The GM-UAW deal portends a new negotiating trend amongst unions as they attempt to preserve jobs at financially troubled companies. Ford and Chrysler are already discussing health care cuts that are similar to those at GM.
The GM health-care benefit cut will result in $3-billion in savings before taxes and save about $1-billion a year in cash. The company did make one concession to the union: GM will make $3-billion in contributions by 2011 to a special fund set up to offset the benefit cuts.
The UAW’s concessions will not be of much use in extracting givebacks in other negotiations, which tend to be industry specific.
We can use this as another example of labor unions over-reaching, causing dire hardships on companies and then,when all is said and done, having to give back what they perceived they had earned.
An unexpected outcome of the GM problem is that some executives in Corporate America are now calling for a national health-care program that will, in effect, relieve corporations of the burden of funding health care for their workers.
Genetic testing of employees as part of a hiring or firing strategy could land an employer in court. Taking the lead to avoid such a scenario, I.B.M. has decided not to use genetic information when considering hiring and firing employees as well as when determining eligibility for health care and other benefits. I.B.M. made its decision as new genetic privacy legislation is being considered by Congress.
Genetic testing has been used to determine a person’s likelihood of contracting certain life-threatening diseases, such as various forms of cancer. Employees and employee advocacy groups have been urging Congress to pass legislation that would prohibit employers from using genetic information when making employee retention and health benefit decisions. The Senate has passed a genetic information nondiscrimination bill, and the House is considering similar legislation. About 40 states have laws that address some aspect of genetic privacy and discrimination
Genetic data has often been used without workers’ knowledge. In 2002, for example, there was a $2.2 million settlement that the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reached with the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company. The railroad, it was claimed, tested or wanted to test, 36 of its employees without their knowledge or consent. According to testimony, the company performed the tests to prove that workers’ arm injuries stemmed from a rare genetic condition, not from work-related stress. The railroad, while not admitting it broke any laws, agreed to prohibit its doctors from using genetic tests during medical examinations.
Privacy provisions in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act plus those in disability and civil rights laws already prohibit the use of personal medical information when making hiring, firing, and benefit decisions; however, those laws deal with existing conditions, not with ones that may develop in the future.
We regularly work with employers, creating hiring and termination programs as well as health care benefit programs that do not run afoul of federal and state laws and regulations.
Before terminating an employee, one must have a termination program in place. Every i must be dotted, every t crossed. And when it comes to terminating an employee who is a union negotiator, one must not only be sure that every legal step has been taken, but one must demonstrate that such firings have nothing to do with upcoming negotiations. If a firing takes place during a union negotation, the company is inviting all sorts of problems, ranging from NLRB hearings to court cases, from slowdowns to strikes.
A Vermont telephone company. VTel, has recently fired an employee who is an elected union negotiator. The union and management have brought their cases to The National Labor Relations Board, which will have to decide if the company broke union negotiating laws.
The company claims there is a diminished workload as a result of an increase in DSL customers who do not require as much technical support as dial-up customers.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) however, claims that there were other motives behind the firing.
The union represents only employees who work on the regulated side of the business, not the DSL side. The company claims it had every right to fire the employee.
The union claims that federal law prohibits a compnay from making staff changes while negotiating a contract.
This is another case of management waiting too long to act. If they wanted to remove the employee as part of their negotiating strategy, they should have done so long before the contract came up for negotiation.
My corporate clients have strategies and tactics in place months before it’s time to negotiate with a union.