Without question this is one of the strangest times we have ever traveled through at the FDIC. This Chairman is championed by a few senior managers as being the consummate leader, while most middle managers and the rank and file employees look at him as a strange combination of "Jed Clampitt and Mr. Drysdale."

The latest effort of Senior Management, espoused by our friends in Corporate Services and Labor Employee Relations, is a yarn spun about NTEU’s rejection of the FDIC’s "sincere" effort to work out a new compensation agreement by the end of the year. Of course, this is, to quote Jed Clampitt, "HOGWASH!" They characterized the disagreement over "one" little issue.

My fellow employees it’s anything but LITTLE! With the assumption of office of a new administration the entire panel of the Federal Services Impasse Panel was replaced. A move unprecedented to my recollection. The result and reason for the FDIC’s insistence to abandon the previously consistently used method for settling impasse, an arbitrator, is pretty transparent. They are hoping to capitalize on a panel which will be anything but an unbiased third party, and/or they hope to bottle up any new agreement for a year and a half to two years. And, of course, as they have mentioned, they "MUST" freeze the salaries and benefits at the current level. Again Jed Clampitt would have a fitting description for this disingenuous gesture! I think it would start with "horse" or "bull." You pick!

The effort at this point seems to be directed at driving a wedge between the employees and/or the employees and middle management. This is leadership?

It occurred to me that in the face of the necessity to force out another 500 employees, because as we’ve been told we’re overstaffed, and in the face of insisting on reducing office space for the staff, the FDIC Senior "leadership" has found that they have the need and resources to build a new multi-million dollar office building at Virginia Square. I wonder who they will want to name this building after? You can bet it won’t be some poor schmuck who thought the mission of the FDIC was to examine banks or act as receiver and relieve some poor banker of his misguided belief that there was no need to play by the rules.

This is a time for all of us to stand strong. We’ll need to mobilize every resource we have. We’ll need to redouble our effort with our friends in Congress and alert them to what the result of an agency that is wondering away from it’s mission will cause. We need to all be counted as members of NTEU. A burst in membership will send a mission of it’s own.

What we’re promoting is not "self interest"…it’s the "best interest" of the financial structure of our country. If not for the FDIC the financial underpinning of our economy will erode and consumer confidence will sink even further. By opposing this misguided management you’re protecting your children, your family, your friends, and millions of citizens you don’t even know. Stand tall and firm!