The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations, established by executive order in December, has held its first meeting, discussing the functions and operating procedures the council will follow going forward.

The council is co-chaired by OPM director John Berry and OMB deputy director Jeffrey Zients and is a presidential advisory body consisting of senior government officials and representatives from unions and federal management groups.

"I know this council is going to make us proud because of its emphasis on coming up with ideas and innovative ways to improve the delivery of services and products, while cutting costs and advancing federal employee interests," said Berry.

The council is intended to assist in the implementation of department or agency-level labor-management forums to promote partnership efforts between labor and management in the executive branch, partly meant to reduce labor-management disputes including grievances, unfair labor practices and court cases.
 

OPM has announced the rollout of its 2010 federal employee viewpoint survey – formerly known as the federal human capital survey – and expects it to reach some half a million personnel by mid March.

The results will be used to determine how well the federal government is running its HR management systems, and it will give senior managers critical information to answer personnel questions, OPM said.

New items this year address employee engagement – an area the Merit Systems Protection Board has repeatedly emphasized as an indicator of mission success and productive employees – as well as work-life issues OPM described as essential to helping make federal agencies model workplaces.

The survey is also intended to measure employee perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions that characterize successful organizations are present in their agencies.

OPM said it expects agency managers to use the data, which will not be available for months, to make a sophisticated assessment of their own human capital management and develop action plans for improvement.
 

As prohibited personnel practices continue a downward trend begun in 1992, the Merit Systems Protection Board has said it would begin devoting special attention to whistleblower retaliation and will explore federal employee opinions concerning the whistleblowing process and barriers to reporting wrongdoing beginning with its next Merit Principles Survey.

MSPB said the government has made substantial progress in achieving a workplace largely free of discrimination and that employees in general are beginning to perceive it as relatively discrimination-free.

Prohibited practices overall are on the decline as well, MSPB said, such as coercing political activity, obstructing persons from competing for employment, and discriminating on the basis of non job-related personal conduct.

It also said the percentage of employees who believe that they have been retaliated against for exercising their right to file an appeal, report an unlawful behavior, or disclose a safety danger has fallen in recent years.

While noting that 70 percent of employees still express concern that some supervisors base personnel decisions on favoritism rather than merit, MSPB said that going forward its newly constituted board would attempt to learn more about prohibited practices and whistleblowing in particular.