For Immediate Release
Tuesday, May 16, 2000
650 More FAA Headquarters' Employees Choose AFSCME Representation
WASHINGTON —About 650 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) offices of the Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions (ARA) and Configuration Management (ACM) will be represented by Council 26 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, after a vote on May 11. The tally was 331 for AFSCME Council 26, 119 for no representation and 51 challenged ballots. Over the past two years, more than 2,000 FAA headquarters' employees have joined AFSCME's ranks.
"People voted for the union for many different reasons," said Lockett Yee, a senior systems engineer in the ARA. "But their votes are clear that there are problems at FAA that the majority of people want resolved through a union."
Among the employee concerns are protections lost when, by a vote of Congress, the FAA no longer had to apply Title V protections to its employees, leaving the agency to come up with its own rules covering sick and vacation leave, overtime, holidays and grievance procedures, among other things. Subsequent to that 1996 vote, the FAA has been instituting personnel "reforms" without employee input. Employees, furthermore, are concerned about different standards being applied in different FAA offices, and the uneven application of those standards even within offices.
Employees voting for the union in ARA and ACM include engineers, scientists, program analysts, contracting officers, clerical and operations research staff.
Rick Richardson, a FAA management and program analyst and internal union organizer, said that many within FAA want to believe that the union effort is the work of a "rebel group." " What the cumulative union votes show, however," he said, "is that 2,000 people in headquarters want to make the FAA the best agency it can be. The vote reflects our concerns and our beliefs. It reflects pride in the FAA."
Another election for AFSCME Council 26 representation will take place May 18 in the office of Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation.
