The NASA Council of IFPTE Locals
by Wes Darbro
The NASA Council of IFPTE Locals (NCIL) has developed into a Union with three distinct directions of service to its Locals. It is a large enough body that NASA Management is beginning to recognize its usefulness and power.
In the last year the NCIL has availed itself of a dozen “consultation” opportunities and twice that number of “notices of information”, where the changes did not quite meet the requirements for consultation. Before the NCIL was active, this never happened – it never happened that the Unions were notified ahead of the new policies NASA was putting in place, and of course we couldn’t comment on what we didn’t know. Never were Union officials invited to the Office of the Administrator nor were their knowledge valued. Representatives from all the Centers have met as a group more than once with the former Administrator O’Keefe, and he even called NCIL on his proposed policy for hiring, spending 30 minutes of his valuable time (he went ahead but when Griffin came in he took the NCIL position and canceled the policy). Every Union president was turned down when they asked to meet with the current Administrator Griffin, but he scheduled a meeting with the NCIL President. I could have chosen not to meet with him unless he included the other presidents but I chose to honor his request, otherwise no Union official would have met with him. We did not meet in secret, I invited all the Locals to give me input as to their concerns – we never had that opportunity before. Recently we have noticed when issues of great importance have arisen NASA has requested and used members of the NCIL to assist them in formulating policy. For example Rhoda Hornstein from Hdqrs, Dr. Paul Davis from ARC, David Jones from GSFC, and Chris Knight of ARC working with NASA for days, or months. The NCIL is being effective for every Center. This kind of respect and involvement never happened before.
On a different front, not dealing with NASA directly, the NCIL goes above to NASA’s funding source, the Congress. Look at what NCIL’s Legislative Representative Dr.Lee Stone has done, even testifying before Congress. He has involved Matt Biggs of IFPTE and as a duo, has among other things, communicated the problems NASA, trying to do Exploration without enough funding, is having with science and aeronautics. With unrelenting pressure that they have brought to bear on Congress and the efforts of Local 28 at GRC on their Representatives and also Senators Mikulski of Maryland and Shelby of Alabama (even when it hurt Alabama) NASA has managed to spread work around in hopes of having 10 Healthy Centers and have gotten RIFs eliminated that would have occurred. The NCIL has not stopped working and today we have anti-RIF language in the Appropriations Bill on the Senate side that is favorable to science and aeronautics employees that hopefully will remain after “conference” finalization.
The third leg of the NCIL is its strength it gives to the individual Locals by providing a forum to discuss issues that each local is experiencing – this is the monthly VITs that NASA is paying for. This effort has served to stifle any effort that could have arisen to divide us. Because of the NCIL effort here we now know each other and are able to call on each other for ideas or help.
To reiterate, the NCIL goes about its business in three distinct areas. We work (1) with NASA leaders directly affecting policy, we work (2) with their funding source Congress and we work (3) to strengthen our member Locals. The NCIL has done all of this in three years and without spending any of our money.
There have been issues that are management’s right and so not mandated by law that NASA deal with us, yet we try to effect their policy by being helpful and we communicate often with thoughts and suggestions. We cannot require NASA legally to do any of the above except for Consultation. Consultation as a general rule is: they tell us what they may do and we comment on what we think of it and they finalize and send it to our Locals where we have the option to negotiate. The NCIL has no rights to negotiate or to force NASA to meet with us but if we continue to be active as a group, they will continue to involve us. Deputy Administrator Shana Dale called NCIL a few days ago and pledged to call again in the next two months and I know personally Rex Geveden who is Griffin’s right hand man and I can call him anytime although I haven’t since he left MSFC. On the other hand if we look at AFGE who has Locals in at least 5 Centers, they have essentially no voice with NASA because they have no Council and are not together.
A lot of people over the last three years have done excellent work for the NCIL and we are proud of them. It is in our best interest to encourage and support them, and as time passes the NCIL will get stronger and it will become what we all dream it can be. Also I wish to thank IFPTE and Greg Junemann for their total support.
Thanks,
Wesley Darbro, President
NCIL