GAO Analysts to Seek Union Representation

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Watchdogs who work for the Congress are ready to seek union representation.

A group of analysts at the Government Accountability Office -- often dubbed the congressional watchdog agency because it ferrets out waste, fraud and mismanagement in the executive branch -- plan to petition today for a union election.

The call for a union vote, to a large degree, reflects unhappiness over changes in recent years to pay and personnel rules at the GAO that some analysts believe have eroded teamwork and increased workplace tension over assignments, responsibilities and promotions.

"We need a meaningful way to work with management," Judy Knepper, a senior analyst and project manager who has been at the GAO for 21 years, said yesterday.

The GAO has been in the vanguard of the pay-for-performance movement in government, mainly because David M. Walker, the agency head, has wanted to ensure that his workforce could serve as a model for modern public-sector compensation practices. Congress granted him broad leeway to reshape the GAO workforce in 2004.

Walker retained a consulting firm to look at GAO pay practices and help design a compensation system that reflected labor-market salary rates. The study suggested that many longtime GAO employees were overpaid, based on their job positions.

The GAO, in the end, decided to not give pay raises to about 300 analysts and specialists in January 2006. The agency also split a "pay band," or salary range, in two and restructured salary caps for many employees. Dozens of GAO employees complained that the new pay system had not been implemented fairly.

Although Walker posted information on the agency's internal Web site and met with the agency's Employee Advisory Council about the changes, some employees decided it was time to bring in a union to formally bargain on their behalf with GAO management.

In April 2006, GAO analysts approached colleagues at the Congressional Research Service, where employees are represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

The analysts and the union struck up a partnership, and the union helped sponsor meetings of GAO employees last summer, including some held in a church basement near the agency's headquarters on G Street NW. One analyst used her vacation to visit GAO field offices across the country and urge those employees to join the organizing effort. Union advocates coined the slogan "Band together," a reference to the agency's pay bands.

Union officials said yesterday that a majority of the 1,500 analysts at the GAO have signed cards asking for a unionization vote. GAO analysts and union officials plan to file the cards with the GAO's personnel board before noon today.

Union officials Paul Shearon and Julia Atkins Clark and spokesman Jamie Horwitz said they hoped voting and balloting procedures can be worked out so that GAO employees can cast votes by summer's end. The union expects the GAO to raise questions about who is eligible to vote because some analysts take on supervisory or management responsibilities.