November 19, 2008

NTEU stands ready to work with President-elect Barack Obama and the congressional leadership on ways to strengthen federal agencies to help them better meet their critical missions and serve the American public.

We recognize that the extent to which our government will be successful rests in large measure with all of you, the federal employees charged with carrying out agency missions. Too often, in the past eight years, federal agencies were understaffed and underfunded making it difficult for you to do your work and for our agencies to meet their missions.

For that reason, we have submitted a carefully-constructed document of recommendations to the Obama transition team that we believe will help get our government agencies back on track. I wanted to share these recommendations with you.

During the presidential campaign, President-elect Barack Obama provided NTEU with written support on many of these issues in response to our pre-endorsement questionnaire, including fair pay for federal employees, repealing the private tax collection program, extending collective bargaining rights to all Department of Homeland Security employees and improving the affordability of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

As we welcome a new administration, we also welcome a new spirit of partnership and cooperation in which leaders work with employees and their representatives to strengthen federal agencies and improve service to the American public.

Our recommendations were guided by the following overriding principles:

1. Increases in productivity are best achieved when managers and employees work in partnership and collaboration to achieve agency missions.

2. Contracting out is costing American taxpayers far too much. Inefficient contracts should be ended and the work returned to federal agencies saving taxpayer dollars and increasing accountability.

3. Adequate resources and authority are needed to achieve agency missions.

4. Efficiency in federal agencies can be increased by driving resources to the front line.

4. Collective bargaining is in the public interest.

5. Civil service changes, particularly in performance management and pay, should be tied to evidence of increasing the potential for achieving agency missions, not just vague concepts like flexibility and modernity.

Among some of the specific recommendations are:

•  A return to partnership and a collaborative approach to labor-management relations.
   
• Granting collective bargaining rights to TSA employees and moving those employees to the General Schedule. And, restoring union membership to other federal employees who were removed from bargaining units.
   
• Ending the outsourcing of the tax collection work of the IRS to the private sector.
   
• Reining in runaway contracting, returning inherently governmental work to federal employees, introducing transparency to the contracting process and leveling the playing field for federal employees in contracting competitions. And, suspending all A-76 contracting out competitions for one year.
   
• Reviewing alternative pay systems and ending those that are unsuccessful including repealing authority for the Department of Homeland Security to create its own system.
   
• Allowing employees at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to bargain for pay as they do at other financial regulatory agencies.
   
• Fixing the federal labor relations system by clearing up the backlog at the FLRA and appointing labor relations professionals to the FSIP.
   
• Making FEHBP more affordable and accessible for federal employees and their families.
   
• Retaining good employees through such steps as paid parental leave and sick leave credit for FERS employees.
   
• Enacting whistleblower protections.
   
• Helping our retirees by repealing the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset and allowing for pre-tax treatment of federal retiree health care premiums.
   
• Expanding availability of LEO retirement benefits to other deserving positions.

These are just some of the many issues we will be working on with the new administration and Congress. There will be many more. The new administration faces the most serious challenges of any administration in our lifetimes. This document is a thoughtful attempt to highlight ways to improve the federal workplace, make our government more efficient and change the way federal employees interact with agency leadership. Our expectations must be realistic. While we do expect change, we know that not everything can change overnight.

I look forward to working with the new administration to put in place many of NTEU’s recommendations and to develop innovative ways to restore vitality to our agencies and improve the image of public service.