Dear Bargaining Unit Members,
POPA and the USPTO have reached the half-way point in negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement and we wanted to give you an update on the negotiations.
While POPA's negotiating team is working extremely hard to protect your rights and benefits and make the USPTO a great place to work, the agency has taken a number of positions that are very harsh towards examiners. This is particularly true in areas such as performance appraisal, disciplinary actions and limiting POPA's ability to effectively represent you. At a time when the agency needs to keep every employee it can, the USPTO wants unfettered discretion to treat employees as it pleases. It wants you to be an "at will" employee, i.e., the agency can discipline you or fire you at will. Even more insidious is that the agency wants to limit or prevent any review or appeal of management decisions by a third party such as an independent arbitrator.
The agency doesn't even want to agree to provide private offices for examiners, GS-13 and above, as they are currently required to do. In fact, the agency isn't even agreeing to provide offices at all. They want to be able to put you in a cubicle if they want, rather than rent additional space!
Attached is a brief summary of a number of the more serious issues for which the agency does not want employees to have significant rights, protections or benefits. For example, the USPTO is refusing to commit to treating POPA bargaining unit members fairly and equitably. They want supervisors to have unlimited discretion to manage their art units or TCs however they deem appropriate. Of course, the agency wants employees to trust that it will do the right thing and, therefore, employees won't need any contractual rights and protections.
These negotiations are far from over and rest assured that POPA will continue to fight as hard as possible to protect employees' rights and benefits. But we are also obliged to let you know the status of the negotiations from time-to-time and this is especially important to do where, as here, the agency has chosen to take very harsh positions against you. We have taken these issues up the chain of command to the highest levels and it has only become more clear that the positions taken by the USPTO negotiating team do, indeed, represent the wishes of Jon Dudas, Margaret Peterlin, John Doll and Peggy Focarino. In one breath they tell you that you are the most important asset of the USPTO, and in the next breath they want to be able to discipline you or fire you any time they want. Management's actions are speaking much louder than their words.
We will have additional information for you at POPA's Annual Meeting on December 5, 2007 at 12:00 Noon in the Madison Auditorium. Hope to see you there. Space is obviously very limited so come early and get a good seat.
Thanks.
Robert Budens