ATTACHMENT 3 U.S. FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS COUNCIL, To: Mr. Anthony F. Ingrassia, Office of Labor-Management Relations, Civil From: Harold D. Kessler, Acting Executive Director. The following is supplied pursuant to your request for a breakdown of certain Council case processing statistics previously furnished your office by Mr. Frazier. The Federal Labor Relations Council was established by Executive Order 11491, Labor-Management Relations in the Federal Service, which was issued by President Nixon on October 29, 1969, effective on January 1, 1970. The Council consists of the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, who is the Chairman of the Council, the Secretary of Labor and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The Council was established in response to a clearly recognized need for a central authority to administer the Federal sector labor-management relations program. Executive Order 10988, the first Executive Order governing labormanagement relations in the executive branch, had provided that authority to administer the program should be vested in the heads of executive departments and agencies with technical guidance and assistance provided by the Department of Labor and the Civil Service Commission. Within a few years agencies and unions clearly recognized the need for a central authority to administer the program and make final decisions on policy questions and disputed matters. According to the Report of the 1969 Study Committee, agencies had found that the lack of authoritative central rulings on policy questions tended to build up unreasonable pressures on the labor-management relationship. The mere appearance of bias inherent in agency resolution of disputes between the agency and a union had placed an excessive burden on agency decisionmaking. Labor organizations complained of the basic inequality in such an arrangement and insisted on program supervision by a central authority and third-party handling of disputed matters. |