LOCAL 1998
Alex Allen, President
Phone (504) 412-2673
Grievance Between the Parties
Date: September 16, 2003
To: Frank Moss, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
Passport Services
cc: Ann Barrett, Florence Fultz, Gary Roach, and Susan
Moorse
RE: National Standards Survey
In accordance with Article 20, Section 8 of the Agreement Between Passport
Services and the National Federation of Federal Employees – Local 1998, Federal
District 1, International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers,
AFL-CIO (hereafter referred to as “the Agreement”), I am filing this Grievance
Between the Parties on behalf of the bargaining unit members of the Passport
Services.
This grievance concerns the Passport Services Management's decision to change
the Adjudication performance standards and elements of approximately 425 of our
bargaining unit employees in violation of the Agreement and the law, and by
means that are in violation of the Agreement and the law.
Local 1998 requested official time for two bargaining unit members in each pay
grade GS-5, GS-7, GS-9 and GS-11 in each agency to conduct a study of the
proposed national standards. This request was denied on August 28 by Florence
Fultz. Ms Fultz stated “After consulting with other members of the PPT
management team, I am not approving the request for official time to perform a
second survey of ppt specialist production. Our consensus is that the survey
done was comprehensive and sufficient. An additional, timeconsuming study is not
necessary and there is no reason to expect more definitive results.”
We are alleging that Management has committed three violations:
1) The employees have not been afforded an opportunity to participate in the
establishment of the performance standards; Article 18 paragraph 4.
2) The employees and their Union representatives have not been involved as full
partners in considering this problem at the pre-decisional stage; Article 4
paragraph 6.
3) Management has not complied with the rules in the contract and the statutes
governing the use of official time; Article 7 paragraph 6
It is our primary concern that the new standards are fair for the employees in
accordance with Article 18 paragraphs 1 and 2. We are aware and very proud I
might add of the number of passports issued throughout the system. We are also
aware that because of the very high priority that has been historically given to
production numbers that most adjudicators have developed shortcuts to doing
everything that should be done on each application in order to achieve high
production numbers. Management has stated that one of the objectives for
creating the new standards is to standardize requirements between the offices
and to ensure that high numbers are not the main objective. Management conducted
a survey several months ago without notifying the Union and without and Union
input. We were promised the raw data from that survey which we still have not
received. Our concern and reason for requesting the new survey is that we feel
that if employees were surveyed while they were taking these shortcuts, and the
new standards are established based on that survey, employees will continue to
have to take these shortcuts to make the new standards. This is now what we
understand that management wants employees to do. We would like to instruct the
employees of the new survey to follow all of the procedures for each application
and look at the results. We do not doubt that management’s study was
comprehensive but we feel that it may not have measured exactly what it should
have been measuring, what is a fair number of applications that a Specialist can
be expected to do. We must disagree that the new study would be time consuming.
The Specialist would be doing exactly what they do everyday, they would be
adjudicating applications. She says that there is no reason to expect more
definitive results. That may or may not be the case but before we can fully
endorse the new standards, we deserve the opportunity to know that they are
fair.
Requested Relief: We request that we be allowed to conduct the study as
requested and that management review the results of the study prior to
establishing the new standards.