From FedNews Online - November 2004:

*****NTEU SAYS UNIONS CONTRIBUTE TO IMPROVED JOB SATISFACTION*****

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen M. Kelley said a Government Accountability Office report showing significant improvements in employee pay, benefits and job satisfaction at the Securities and Exchange Commission "clearly reflects the impact of union representation and a union-negotiated labor agreement."

Kelley offered her assessment of NTEU's impact at the agency in the wake of a survey of SEC attorneys, accountants and examiners by GAO, which updated a 2001 survey of these employees' views on several important workplace and related issues.

Some 77 percent of employees in these three professional work categories signaled their satisfaction with pay - a jump of 60 percentage points from the 2001 survey.

Large numbers of SEC employees also expressed satisfaction with their right to apply for flexitime work schedules - a benefit secured in the first-ever term labor agreement. Other agreed-upon benefits were part-time employment, travel, training, grievance procedures, equal employment opportunity, leave, transportation subsidies, credit hours and child care tuition assistance.

"There is no question in my mind that substantial improvements in overall job satisfaction and other important quality-of-life measures among SEC employees are directly tied to their decision in 2000 to be represented," Kelley said.