Memorandum to Heads of Operating Divisions: Labor-Management Partnership and Pre-Decisional Involvement

Early in his administration, President Clinton issued an Executive Order requiring the establishment of effective labor-management partnerships throughout the Federal sector in order to change the nature of Federal labor-management relations and deliver the highest quality services to the American people. Soon thereafter we made a commitment to promote labor-management partnerships in all components and at all levels of the Department of Health and Human Services. While we have several years experience and some compelling partnership success stories, we recognize that we have an ongoing need to improve and refine our labor-management partnership efforts with a view toward both enhancing our ability to meet mission requirements and improving the quality of work life for all members of the HHS community.

We reaffirm our commitment to the continued development and operation of strong partnerships with our union colleagues. Based on our experience to date, we know that an effective means of accomplishing this goal is to involve employees and their unions in analysis of issues and options at the earliest stages of and throughout the decision-making process. Pre-decisional involvement of employees and their union does not remove the right to formal collective bargaining. It does have the salutary effect of enlisting employees and their union as partners in our ongoing quest to provide more efficient service to our clients and a better working environment for the individuals who provide that service.

Many examples of our mutual successes in the area of labor-management partnership and predecisional involvement exist. Several Operating Divisions include their union in executive staff retreats and pre-planning for them; others have successfully discussed, at the pre-decisional stages, difficult and controversial issues such as major reorganizations, often limiting or even obviating the need for extensive formal bargaining prior to implementation; and still others have developed or shaped training, career transition assistance, family-friendly policies and programs, and quality of work life improvement efforts. Our goal is to build on these accomplishment as we strive to make predecisional involvement and partnership everyday practices in HHS.

In closing, we urge you to make maximum efforts to continue to foster labor-management partnership and pre-decisional involvement of employees and their unions throughout your Operating Divisions. The HHS Union-Management Partnership Council, which is chaired by the Deputy Secretary, has developed several tools to assist you including training programs on various aspects of partnership and a Labor-Management Partnership Handbook Members of the HHS Union-Management Partnership and staff in the Office of Human Resources, ASMB are also available to advise and assist you.

Donna E. Shalala
Kevin Thurrn

cc: HHS Employees