Collective bargaining agreements

In light of my education focus, I have taken a particular interest in better understanding unions: how the function, what good they do, and how they hinder reform. As I was organizing all of ED’s publications (ever!), I came across the most recent, and possibly the only, collective bargaining agreement for federal employees within ED. It was completed in 1995 and its predecessor is nearing completion as I type.
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Having watched Waiting for ‘Superman’ and seen its onslaught of union practices not more than two months ago, I brought a fairly critical eye to my reading of the agreement. One thing I noticed was the quick turn-around and response time that was outlined in the section on grievances. For example, if an employee wants to file a grievance, they have 10 days (LOOK UP) to do so (as a general rule, given there are no extraneous circumstances). I thought this was quite brief; 10 days to have an incident occur, figure out the proper procedures, and respond to it. But through talking with my professor, a former FMCS employee, I came to understand the problems that can arise from leaving the response-time window open too wide. If a person is allowed to file a grievance at any point after an incident, there’s virtually nothing stopping someone from filing a retaliatory grievance. The meat of the bargaining agreement, according to my professor, is the section on grievances. This outlines exactly how a violation of the contract will be addressed – thus, detailing how each issue at the margin will be dealt with.
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Today, union workers constitute little more than 10 percent of the total workforce. But they represent nearly 40 percent of the public sector.
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Another fortunate opportunity I had was to discuss unions with three guests to my class who had worked in mediation-related fields; one was a retired lawyer who had worked at a private company as a mediator/facilitator, another was a current FMCS employee, and the other had worked in the HR department of a private company and with aviation unions. Each had experience at some point in their career, working with unions, although I do not know if they were ever a part of contract negotiations. When asked what she thought of unions generally and whether she liked dealing with them, the FMCS employee explained that she thought they were a valuable entity, as long as the leadership was concerned first and foremost with serving its members. Employees are best served when they are working, which is also a goal of hers – to get people back to work – but she had spoken of times where leadership either ineffectively served members by focusing on non-issues, or poorly served its members by bringing a self-interested, prideful attitude to the table. She also said that instances, such as these, were rare.