All Systems Go

Capitalizing on bad management, FAA workers combat new pay system by joining the union.

By Jimmie Turner

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bad management is very good for union organizing, as the Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of proving. Employees of several FAA divisions provided additional proof on March 9, when they voted for AFSCME representation, the third such union victory at the agency since June 1999.

In 1996, Congress excluded the FAA from the general schedule payroll. That move was designed to give management more flexibility in reforming the wage scale. Union officials see the move as an underhanded attempt to ease employees out of the pay system and, ultimately, into privatization.

FAA workers discovered they were getting the short end of the stick as management threatened to impose a subjective, performance-based merit system without their consent. With an eye toward expanding the practice to other federal agencies, management seeks to replace the system with a new core compensation plan that could lead to a loss in pay for hundreds of employees. The law infringes upon their Title V rights – by giving management the authority to alter benefits.

“It was time that we had a union in FAA,” explains Judy Davis of Air Traffic Services. “Management’s had too much of a role in making decisions about core compensation. Also, our right to accumulate leave and take holidays through Title V were subject to withdrawal by management anytime it wanted to.”

FAA BEACHHEAD. With support from the International, Council 26 — comprised of federal employees in Washington, D.C. — organized 93 employees of the FAA’s Office of Chief Counsel in June 1999. After that group joined AFSCME, droves of FAA workers started calling the council. “We established a beachhead at FAA when their attorneys decided to choose union representation,” says council Pres. Saul Schniderman, “and from there it was like building a house, brick by brick.”

In December, more than 500 professional employees voted for union representation in a landslide victory. In March, nearly 800 other professionals voted 4 to 1 to join up, bringing the total to 1,400 new members. The council looks to conclude its FAA campaign in May with a victory in the agency’s Research and Acquisition division, which has another 800 employees.

The external organizing blitz in FAA will pad Council 26’s membership rolls, which have tripled in recent years from 840 to 2,400 because of its ongoing internal-organizing strategy.

ROTTEN ‘CORE.’ The basic premise of the new core compensation pay plan is to reward outstanding performers for their hard work, which would affect 15 percent of the entire agency. “Such judgments become very subjective,” contends Archie Muckle of Aviation Policy and Plans. “We all can be very outstanding workers and not get any compensation because management will only reward the top 15 percent. What we’re proposing is if you work hard and exceptionally well, you should get compensated for that regardless of whether you fall within an arbitrary percentage.”

Council 26 was able to convince a group of employees to assist in organizing their co-workers. “I’m one of the original organizers in my division,” says Muckle. “I got involved because I stand to lose all I’ve worked for over the years.”

He explains that although the core compensation plan looks good on paper, “the problem with ‘core’ is that the managers here have historically been very bad. So you have bad managers administering a system that doesn’t work.”

Carolyn Loff, who works in Airway Facilities, agrees with Muckle’s assessment. “I went to a core compensation briefing given by management,” she recalls. “I had specific questions, and they could not answer them. The answers they did give just didn’t make sense.”

Council 26 Exec. Director Carl Goldman says of the 1,300 new professional members: “I think they recognized that the union offered the only vehicle to make sure they have a voice in setting their pay and keeping important civil service protections.” Adds Schniderman, “Sometimes a crisis brings people together, and some of the problems at FAA have brought these employees together.”

WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING. For decades, AFSCME has been battling a pay system very similar to core compensation: pay for performance. Either way, public agency managers attempt to compensate workers on a system modeled after the private sector. Management simply rewards workers based on subjective criteria. The union has recently beaten back pay-for-performance proposals in Florida and Maryland. New York’s DC 37 is currently challenging Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s plan to establish pay-for-performance standards for public employees.

Studies have shown that merit pay fosters patronage, favoritism and discrimination; creates on-the-job discord among workers concerned about individual performance; undermines healthy group dynamics; lowers performance because people who expect rewards perform worse than those who don’t; costs too much; and favors higher-level employees.

States without collective bargaining rights have applied this practice for years, but AFSCME continues its efforts to eradicate it.

GUIDING LIGHT. AFSCME stepped in at the right time. By building a broad-based organizing campaign to protect hundreds of FAA professionals from management, the union is also preventing a situation in which workers are turned against themselves. With a subjective pay structure, workers compete among themselves for favor while management plays them against each other. In the end, the workers get caught short. It’s a scenario AFSCME knows all too well.

Organizing the professionals, who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 annually, was a challenge. At the onset of the campaign, some workers viewed unions negatively because they had never been in one.

“I didn’t think I’d be a union member ever in my life,” says Tom Waters of the FAA’s Office of Chief Counsel. “What I think has pulled people together is the camaraderie and the honest team aspect of it. This is no phony team-building exercise. This is the real McCoy.”

Waters helped organize his unit, and he sees union fever spreading throughout the FAA ranks. After voting to join AFSCME, “we had a meeting with top management in our office, and we all agreed that we want to cooperate. We want to work shoulder to shoulder, and we’re there to help ourselves and management. Everybody just feels better about working here, and we haven’t even negotiated a contract yet.”

A CLEAN SWEEP? Council 26 has organized nearly 1,400 employees in three separate elections since June. The final target: about 800 more from the FAA’s Research and Acquisitions division.

The election is set for May, and confidence runs high that the workers will join AFSCME. Several employee organizers have begun talks with the group. Rick Richardson knows why. Says Richardson, a management and program analyst and the lead member of the organizing committee for the office of the Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions: “ARA employees are a diverse group of professionals with many unique needs and requirements. The current FAA philosophy does not necessarily address those in an open forum. We therefore feel that organizing is our only chance for success, and we firmly believe that AFSCME has the track record and the dedicated staff that will help us achieve our goals.”