Future of Federal‐Sector Labor‐Management Relations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21145
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Author: Robert M. Tobias
• Date: 01 December 2015

C R Q, vol. 33, supplement 1, Winter 2015 S101

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21145

Future of Federal-Sector Labor-Management

Relations

Robert M. Tobias

Since the inception of the federal-sector labor-management program in

1963 with the issuance of Executive Order 10988, the program has

experienced sixteen years of trending toward collaboration and thirty-

fi ve years of adversarial labor-management relations. Adversarial

labor-management relationships are antithetical to collaborative labor-

management relationships. Notwithstanding the fact that collabora-

tive labor-management relations can satisfy the interests of managers

and employees through their unions to create better delivery of public

service, the confl uence of presidential, managerial, and union leader

support is hard to create and maintain.

Collaboration is going the way of the dodo bird in federal-sector labor-

management relationships, as in so many other aspects of American

life.

For a brief period, collaborative labor-management relations were an

agreed-upon management and union goal; the trend now, however, is back

toward an adversarial relationship.  is hardening of positions operates

to the detriment not only of federal managers, employees, and the unions

that represent them but also to the public.

 e causes of this retreat to the adversarial are a combination of (1) a

reluctance by managers and union leaders to believe that spending time

with the other will advance their goals, (2) a lack of presidential support for

creating and maintaining collaborative labor-management relationships,

and (3) a lack of a proven record of agency productivity success from col-

laborative labor-management relationships.  ese factors are leading once

again to a period where each party seeks to preserve and protect its rights

rather than to achieve mutual goals.