What is the Labor Management Forum (LMF)?

President Obama has issued Executive Order 13522: Creating the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations and Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services. This is an important change in the way labor-management relations should be conducted in the Federal Sector. The Executive Order gives the union the opportunity to have greater impact to help improve the way Bay Pines works and to help make the workplace better for employees.

The Bay Pines VA Healthcare system has a local LMF which is comprised of  labor and management. A very important component of the LMF is the following:

Pre-decisional Involvement (PDI):

Pre-decisional involvement is defined in the EO in two important places.  In Section 1. Policy, the EO says:

Management should discuss workplace challenges and problems with labor and endeavor to develop solutions jointly, rather than advise union representatives of predetermined solutions to problems and then engage in bargaining over the impact and implementation of the predetermined solutions.

In Section 3, (a)(ii), the EO says that each agency or department head shall:

 …allow employees and their union representatives to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters to the fullest extent practicable, without regard to whether those matters are negotiable subjects of bargaining under 5 U.S.C. 7106…”

PDI truly means that the union is notified about something the agency either wants to do or is required to do before it actually decides how it will respond.  Agencies like to say that involving the union prevents them from acting as quickly as they need to respond to emergencies.  The reality is that agencies frequently spend months dealing with an issue internally before they notify the union about their decision (if they even do that) and give us a month or so to comment.  To the fullest extent practicable, the agency should bring the union into these deliberations as early as possible.  The EO makes it clear that the unions should not be handed a predetermined solution.  In true emergencies, management always has the authority to act quickly.

Tatishka Musgrove, President