AFGE Local 2128
News Flash

The tri-annual Nomination and Election of officers for AFGE Local 2128 concluded on January 3, 2003.
The results are:

As duly elected delegates of this Local, your President and Vice President have been active in union affairs at all levels. This Local has consistently been represented at all AFGE Council Meetings and in all AFGE Council communications. This Local's delegates are currently serving on various Committees of the Council and we expect to participate during the upcoming negotiations of the new DCMA-AFGE Collective Bargaining Agreement once the FLRA issues the AFGE nation wide Unit Certification. This Local's delegates have been in attendance at the AFGE National Convention/Elections as well as at the AFGE 10^th District Caucus/Elections. Your delegates are actively fighting to protect your rights as a civilian federal employee.

Many employees may not realize this, but DCMA has been the most employee unfriendly employer anyone could imagine. DCMA Headquarters has been consistently making changes to employee working conditions in spite of the fact that they are supposed to be maintaining the status quo that existed prior to DCMA breaking off from DLA. DCMA claims to honor and follow the established negotiated agreements with the union, but all the while they are doing everything in their power to nullify and invalidate those agreements. If you don't believe it, then just look at the Master Agreement, Article 13, Merit Promotion, does it resemble RESUMIX? Not hardly. Another good example of their bad faith is the numbers and types of Union Grievances and ULPs that are ongoing.

DCMA District West has been trying to bust the union by all sorts of devious tactics, all centered around attempting to break this Local's bargaining unit jurisdiction into five separate parts. DCMA District West, who is the contractual defined PLFA, refuses to communicate with the union Locals and they claim they have no collective bargaining or Labor Management Relationship with the union Locals. DCMA West continues this activity in an effort to force this Local into filing five (5) difference Union Grievances, one with each of the CMO Commanders and then arbitrating the same identical issue five different times, once with each of the five different CMOs. When it comes to bargaining, DCMA West flat out refuses to cooperate and they again are attempting to force the Local into negotiating the same identical issue five different times, once with each of the CMOs. If this is not bad enough, DCMA District West is actively attempting to repudiate the Master Agreement by refusing to carry out any of the PLFA notice and bargaining obligations that are called out within the Master Agreement. This Local has filed multiple Unfair Labor Practice charges against DCMA due to these repudiations.

Last year we all heard how desperate the agency was due to their budget miscalculations. Employees throughout DCMA did not receive any form of Performance Awards for CY 2001 due to this budget shortfall, but guess what, DCMA District West had plenty of money to fight the union on grievances and during arbitration hearings. They not only brought attorneys and District West Staff in from Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix and California to fight us, they flew witnesses in here from DCMA Headquarters and they paid for Court Reporters to make verbatim transcripts of the arbitration hearings. In addition to all this extravagant and wasteful spending, agency representatives conned a few arbitrators into scheduling more days for the arbitration hearing than were necessary. This resulted in driving up the costs associated with arbitration, up from what they would normally cost. DCMA District West is so adamant and intent on wining at any cost that they have distorted the facts and lied under oath. Our DCMA leadership has shown us a definite lack of integrity and have shown us they will spend whatever taxpayer funds it takes and do whatever it takes in order to stomp DCMA employees in the dirt. Even when we win arbitration decisions, the agency files exceptions in an attempt to deny our employees justice and in order to delay the inevitable resolution of those grievances.

I had hoped that with the establishment of the District Director SES positions to replace the military commanders in the District Offices, that this agency nonsense would stop. I'm sorry to report that the situation has not changed and DCMA District West continues to engage in this anti-employee union busting activity. DCMA's new buzz word, "Transformation" is just another agency tactic to bust the union by committing an intentional bypass of the union and abusing the bargaining unit employees. Labor Management Relations are currently at an all time low. DCMA employees need a strong union now more than ever.

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