DoD Labor Management Collaboration a Sham

Contact:  Randy Erwin   (202) 216-4451 (office)   (202) 898-1866 (fax)  

Arlington, VA – For the second consecutive day, Department of Defense (DoD) officials have been wasting the time of employee representatives who have come to participate in a collaboration regarding the creation of a new labor management relations system at DoD.

Employee representatives were appalled when Defense released an outline of their intentions for the new system in early February.  Since then, employee representatives assembled and developed a unified response to the proposal. 

"The meetings over the last two days were supposed to be the start of a good-faith collaboration on the part of management with employee representatives," said Richard N. Brown, President of the National Federation of Federal Employees/IAMAW.  "This has not even resembled a good-faith collaboration."

The frustration felt by employee representatives stems from provisions in DoD's proposal that will effectively eliminate employees' voice in the work place and rights to due process. 

"DoD is trying to take more rights away from DoD employees than they ever indicated they would to Congress," said Brown.  "They just keep saying "national security," and refuse to explain in any way how aspects of the current system compromise national security or how their proposal will improve it."

"This whole process is an anti-union sham, and more importantly, a waste of tax payers' dollars," Brown concluded.