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Bargaining Stalls Over Key Issues
NTEU Stands Firm Over Pay, Grievance Process, Home
Offices
In late 2006
because NTEU and NCUA were unable to reach agreement on several
contract issues, NTEU requested the involvement of the Federal
Mediation and Conciliation Service. A federal mediator began
assisting us and assumed control over the schedule of negotiations.
Pursuant to the mediator’s directive, the parties met for at least
one full week every month over the past five months. During that
time, we reached agreement on about six articles.
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Message from the
NTEU National
President |
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As bargaining
unit members in the federal government you are
witnessing one of the most difficult periods in
labor-management relations I have ever experienced.
Throughout the federal government, agency management is
difficult and hostile to NTEU and that has been true at
NCUA as well. While first contract negotiations are
traditionally difficult to bargain, the NTEU-NCUA
contract has proven exceptionally difficult.
NCUA
negotiators have refused to budge from the regressive
proposals on issues such as pay, home offices and
certification that they presented when we first sat down
at the table. Their steadfast refusal to bargain over
these issues has turned negotiations attempts into a
stalemate. NTEU will not, however, back down from doing
all we can to achieve the best term agreement possible.
NCUA employees have been ably represented at the table
by Steve Jennings, Heather Hammes, Sharon Holeman,
Cynthia Vaughn and Greg Painter, who are committed to
seeing this process through.
While we are
pursuing a term agreement, NTEU has been busy with other
NCUA issues. We have bargained and signed an agreement
with the agency over wireless broadband and when NCUA
wanted to punish employees who suffered technological
glitches caused by the agency’s contractor, we fought
that too. Examiners under the pilot program received
additional time to complete their work if they were
caught in the failure of the broadband network. NTEU
made a difference.
NTEU also
made a difference when NCUA decided that new examiners
would receive their Level I training in the field rather
than the central office. A one-page agreement with the
agency ensures that these employees will have adequate
time to complete the training modules and that their
training responsibilities will be considered by their
supervisors when work is assigned.
Another area
of great concern to examiners is the rising cost of gas.
As I did during the post-Katrina fuel fluctuations, I
have sent a letter to
the Internal Revenue Service seeking a mid-year
adjustment to the mileage reimbursement rate. We will
work to see a positive adjustment in the IRS rate that
will allow the rate for federal employees who drive
their own vehicles to be adjusted upward as well. While
NCUA does not need to follow the federal standard, it is
my hope that management will not continue to harm its
own employees who are literally paying fuel costs out of
their own pockets.
I want to
thank all the NCUA employees who are providing great
support to the negotiations team as they try to craft a
contract that will improve your working lives. Our voice
is strong and NTEU is determined to achieve your first
contract and bring it to life.
As the
poet and academic Annie Dillard is quoted as saying,
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our
lives.” NTEU’s goal is to make both of those better for
you and your continued support will make that
happen.
Colleen M. Kelley
National President
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The mediation efforts
stalled in May 2007 when bargaining turned again to the issues of
compensation, hours of work, travel and reimbursement and examiner
certification. While our goal has always been to reach an initial
term agreement that will result in employees being treated fairly
and equitably and afford them an avenue for having impartial
third-party review to vindicate alleged violations of those rights,
it is clear that NCUA has absolutely no intention of reaching such a
deal. All signs of progress have vanished and management has
continued to maintain regressive proposals at the table despite
attempts by the mediator to get the agency to make its proposals
more reasonable.
Following are the
outstanding issues with details on management’s and NTEU’s
positions:
Compensation
NCUA
continues to propose no increase in compensation for current
employees and no expansion of the pay bands, even though an
increasing number of employees are now at the top of their pay band.
Consequently, those employees receive merit raises as a lump sum
rather than as an increase to their base pay. The agency does
propose to increase the annual merit pay for the top 75 percent of
high performers while at the same time changing locality rates. The
locality rate changes would result in an actual decrease for most
employees—and even employees in the top 25 percent of the high
performers would attain only a minimal pay raise.
Management continues to
refuse to consider any annual pay raises, even though the law
requires FIRREA agencies to seek “comparability” with each other.
NCUA indicated there is no business case for raising the salaries of
bargaining unit employees, even though comparable FDIC employees are
paid 18 to 23 percent higher in the CU-7 through -14 grades than
NCUA bargaining unit employees. The statistics also show that the
pay for NCUA management officials, compared to FDIC management
officials, is either comparable or higher than FDIC.
Grievance and
Arbitration
NCUA wants to bar
employees from grieving several important issues, most notably
performance appraisals and compensation.
Under NTEU’s proposal,
employees may file grievances on any issue that the Federal Service
Labor-Management Relations statute permits—including performance
appraisals and compensation—and appeal any agency denial of the
grievance to a neutral third-party for arbitration if necessary.
Official Work Site and
Travel
The agency continues to propose
that the examiners’ homes are not their official worksites and would
like to restrict the amount of POV mileage for which the examiners
will be reimbursed. Currently, employees are reimbursed from their
homes.
Previously, NCUA directed examiners to work out of
“home offices” but management now proposes that the home will be a
worksite at which employees must request and be approved to
work—each time they wish to work there.
Under management’s
proposals, POV mileage will not be reimbursed for time spent
“commuting” to and from an office. NCUA has a broad definition of
commuting: field employees who live within the boundaries of their
duty station will not be reimbursed for the first 50 miles of travel
to their offices and, for field employees who live outside the
boundaries of their duty station, the normal commute time “is the
distance from their home to the nearest point of the boundary of
their duty station plus 50 miles.” This proposal will drastically
reduce the payment of POV expenses to examiners even though
examiners have essentially permitted the agency to operate rent-free
out of their private homes for decades.
Certification and Career Ladder
Promotions
NCUA continues to propose
that any examiner in a position with a career path up to the CU-12
Principal Examiner (PE) must pass a comprehensive certification
examination to become a certified examiner and to be
non-competitively promoted from the CU-11 to the CU-12 position.
Once certified, PEs would be required to pass a recertification exam
every three years. Failure to pass the exam would result in the PE
being downgraded to the CU-11 position.
NTEU proposed that
management take the proposal off the bargaining table because the
agency has not yet obtained required authority from the Office of
Personnel Management to maintain such a certification test, thus
there is no reason to bargain.
Mobility
Requirement
NCUA continues to propose
that all future employees be bound by a mobility requirement that
would essentially result in the waiving of their right to any type
of severance compensation in the event employees are directed to
move to a new position in a different geographic area. Under the
agency proposal, if the employee refuses the directed reassignment,
he or she would be separated by the agency without any severance
pay.
If there is no such
mobility requirement the employee would be entitled to severance pay
upon separation. NCUA claims that the proposal is necessary to save
costs, but it has not proffered any evidence that employees
currently refuse directed reassignments or that if they were to do
so, the costs of severance are high. NTEU has opposed, and continues
to oppose, this proposal.
Next
Steps
We have now exhausted all
options under federal labor law to reach agreement except one—the
Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP), a body consisting of seven
political appointees who consistently rule in favor of management.
NTEU has been forced to file a petition with the FSIP where we
expect NCUA to ask the Panel to impose its regressive terms and
conditions on NCUA employees.
Detailed information
about the Panel procedures and its members is available by visiting
www.flra.gov but this is generally what will happen next. An
investigative meeting likely will be scheduled later this month in
Washington, D.C. The case will be presented to the full Panel so it
may decide whether to assert jurisdiction over the case. If the
Panel asserts jurisdiction over the dispute, it will order a
procedure, such as an “Informal Conference” to attempt to resolve
it. If that procedure does not result in a full settlement, the
parties will then give the Panel their last best offers and the case
will be presented to the full Panel when it next meets.
The
Panel will then decide the dispute and issue a decision within two
or three weeks after meeting. Because the FSIP only meets nine or 10
times a year, and it does not disclose to the parties when it meets,
it is difficult to discern when the case may be resolved. But based
on our experience with this Panel, we believe the impasse will be
resolved in the next four to five months. We will keep you apprised
of any developments as they occur.
In the meantime, if you
have any questions about the negotiations, contact Negotiating Team
Members Steve Jennings or Heather Hammes.
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