Western Regional Blog Update - Where is Mike Now? - Policy Negotiations, Washington, DC

As I've said in a previous post, the Agency declared over 60 of our proposals for the Staff Entrance and Search Procedures Policy non-negotiable.  The Union disagrees with the Agency's position, and have filed over 60 separate negotiability appeals with the FLRA (Mike Castelle and Dwayne Person worked through the weekend writing and filing the appeals).

The Agency believes that we have completed Staff Entrance and Search Procedures and must now move on to the Employee Health Policy; we have a signed settlement agreement that we will negotiate Employee Health once Staff Entrance and Search Procedures has been completed.  The Union's position is that Staff Entrance and Search Procedures is NOT completed until the negotiability appeals are resolved.

Considering that the two parties each hold a position that we will be at the table this week to negotiate entirely separate policies, I doubt there will be much real negotiations taking place.

We (the Council Officers) will most likely be discussing, researching and writing more ULPs and grievances this week, as well as further preparing further for the negotiability appeals process.

More updates will follow.