Federal Employee Unions Sue Over Defense Personnel Reform: Declare "Meaningful Discussions" Never Took Place
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Contact: Randy Erwin
(202) 216-4451 (office)
(202) 898-1866 (fax)
Washington,
DC – Today, a coalition of nine labor unions,
collectively representing over 300,000
employees at the United States Department of
Defense (DoD), filed suit against the
Department and the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) for failing to "afford
employee representatives and management the
opportunity to have meaningful discussions
concerning the development of a new system," as
was required by Congress.
Union
officials held a press conference outside of
the United States District Court for the
"The National
Security Personnel System goes beyond being
unfair to employees and bad for the defense of
our nation, it is also unequivocally illegal,"
said John M. Paolino, Secretary/Treasurer of
the National Federation of Federal Employees
(NFFE).
Union
representatives claim DoD and OPM officials
were in violation of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, when
they held "secret working groups" that denied
employee representatives input into the
personnel system
overhaul.
The facts of the lawsuit read: "While the secret groups developed the labor relations system behind closed doors, [DoD and OPM] gave [union representatives] "concept papers" and engaged [union representatives] in meaningless discussions, in which [DoD and OPM] presented no proposals. [DoD and OPM] did not claim that these papers and discussions were the "meaningful discussions" required by [the law]; rather, they expressly said that these papers were not proposals and that the discussions were "pre-statutory.'"
"Today, we
call on the United States District Court for
the District of Columbia to uphold the intent
of the law, and send DoD back to the table
where DoD employees can have the 'meaningful
discussions' we are entitled by the law," said
Paolino.