Federal Analysts Choose Union in First-Ever Vote at GAO

by Mike Hall, Sep 20, 2007

Jacqueline Harpp

By a nearly 2–to–1 majority, analysts at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) capped off a year-and-a-half drive to “Band Together” and yesterday voted to form a union with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE). Says senior analyst Jacqueline Harpp:

We’re ecstatic. Our slogan for this campaign was “band together” and that’s exactly what we did. Over the past 18 months we came together regardless of pay band, years of service and whether we worked in D.C. or the field. This vote reflects that spirit of unity.

Yesterday’s vote was the first time in GAO’s 86-year history that the agency’s analysts have voted for union representation. There are more than 1,800 analysts in the GAO bargaining unit. Analysts at the at GAO’s sister agency, the Congressional Research Service, also are represented by IFPTE.

After sweeping changes in personnel policy were imposed by agency management two years ago, the analysts began their organizing drive in early 2006. They held regular meetings at a downtown Washington, D.C., church, used personal vacation time to travel to field offices around the country, established a Band Together website and produced an online video. This May, they turned in authorization cards signed by the majority of GAO analysts.

But rather than quickly agreeing on an election date, the agency brought in an outside legal firm to help fight the organizing effort. GAO also challenged the union eligibility of hundreds of workers, claiming they were supervisors—and thus not eligible to join the union under current labor law.

In July, the GAO—an independent federal agency—and IFPTE reached an election agreement that included the challenged employees and other GAO employees as well.

Harpp says that following the election victory:

The next steps will be to elect a council, write a constitution, determine bargaining priorities and then sit down with management to negotiate a first contract.

With a nod to the analysts’ expertise, IFPTE President Gregg Junemann says:

We’re going to do everything we can to assist our new members at GAO, but the involvement of the national union will likely be limited. The analysts at GAO are experts at creating efficent organizations. You can bet that their bargaining surveys and their research will be data driven. This local union will be an example for other labor groups.

Says analyst Lise Levie:

We are looking forward to a great relationship with Comptroller General David Walker. The union will help us make GAO a true model agency.

In a related development, Ed Muir, assistant research director at AFT and a frequent poster on the No Child Left Behind (NLCB) blog, Let’s Get Right, points out that a key issue in the GAO drive was management making unilateral changes to the compensation structure. Provisions in the bill to reauthorize NCLB could have the same impact on teachers. Click here to learn more.

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