Document created: 10 October 2003
Air University Review,
July-August 1974
Lieutenant Colonel
William V. Rice, Jr.
Executive Order 12988 has been issued less than two years, and already Air Force commanders are feeling the impact of the new benefits and responsibilities given to members of the armed forces. You will recall that EO 12988 is the Executive Order promulgated by President Moe Bushkin which permits members of the armed forces to form unions whose primary purpose is improvement of the conditions of their employment. To paraphrase President Bushkin:
Whereas, the well-being of the members of the Armed Forces and efficient administration of the Department of Defense are benefited by providing members of the Armed Forces an opportunity to participate in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies and practices affecting the conditions of their employment; and whereas, the participation of Armed Forces members should be improved through the maintenance of constructive and cooperative relationships between labor organizations and management officials;. . .
Executive Order 12988 was obviously patterned after Executive Order 10988 promulgated by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. This Executive Order allowed federal civilian employees to participate in collective actions through unions. Since 1962 the federal Civil Service has been almost completely unionized, and with the abolition of the Civil Service Commission in late 1977 private sector collective bargaining has replaced the so-called “merit system” in federal civilian employment.
The pressure for more representation for the rank and file became evident when the goal of a voluntary armed service was reached during the second Nixon administration. The draft-based armed force was not a fertile field for unionization, since the prevailing attitude among young draftees was “All I want out of the armed forces is me.” But attitudes changed with the coming of the career service based on volunteers who expected to spend a large portion of their working lives in the armed forces. The years spent in the armed forces were no longer an unfortunate interlude between high school and college or between school and career. The individual now had a vested interest in improving his working conditions over a 20- or 30-year career.
The career serviceman also had a much broader vision than the draftees of the sixties. He found that his community of interest encompassed not only members of his own race or sex but all members of the armed services. This new vision did not come about overnight but evolved out of the various groups formed to remedy specific ills of the late sixties and early seventies. The narrow goals of the “liberated woman” and the “disadvantaged black” were integrated with the goals of the “voiceless Junior Officer Council” and the “NCO Council with no responsibility.” These groups found that they were engaged in a zero sum game, a game in which Peter must be robbed to pay Paul. The Department of Defense, in establishing programs to allow for the legitimate aspirations of blacks or women, for junior officers, or any particular group, found itself taking from one to give to the other according to who was applying the most pressure at the time. Out of these contending parties grew the premise that they had more in common than they had in conflict and that real progress could be better accomplished through collective action than through fragmentation. (The American Federation of Labor learned this in the 1880s, but each generation must reinvent its own “wheel.”)
Unionization of the armed forces was also given a boost by a decision of the then Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations, W. J. Usery, Jr., in 1971.1 This decision, the so-called Mayport Doctrine, stated among other things that a “moonlighting” service member working in a nonappropriated-fund activity could not be excluded from the bargaining unit solely because he was under the “ultimate control” of the armed forces. In brief, the moonlighting GI had the right to form, join, or assist a labor organization freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal.
The job in the nonappropriated-fund activity was made more important to the moonlighter when President Nixon signed the Henderson Bill (H.R. 9092) in August 1972.2 This bill brought all nonappropriated-fund employees under the wage board salary system effective 30 April 1973. The reader will remember too well the crunch in which the base commander was caught by the provisions of this bill. Higher salaries throughout the base exchange system meant less funds to pay the higher salaries of the nonappropriated employees. Some observers said that this bill was a blessing in disguise, since at last some order was brought to the nonappropriated-fund system, which had almost gotten out of control. Commanders now had to take a hard look at the nonappropriated functions they had inherited, to determine which contributed to the morale and welfare of the troops and which ones had to go because they were in the “nice to have” category, serving a limited number of personnel. But the moonlighting GI was better paid in his second job and therefore had a vested interest in it.
It should also be remembered that the bargaining units, which are only now emerging, were not easy to determine. As with the federal civilian employee during the decade of the sixties, the military unions attempted to gerrymander units to include groups in which they had strength. The union movement was further fragmented by attempts of various craft groups to form their own restrictive bargaining units. For example, navigators were among the first to attempt to organize a craft union. Even though navigators fully subscribed to the conventional axiom, “Your main job is to fly and fight,” it was readily apparent to even the casual observer that promotions and increased responsibilities were more readily available to craftsmen other than navigators.
The Air Force forestalled the activities of the navigators union in much the same way that a nonunion firm in the private sector attempts to keep the union out: by giving the navigator some of the responsibilities his union was seeking.3 The Air Force made strides in eliminating discrimination based not only on the color of the skin or the shape of the body but also based on the type of wings possessed or their lack.
Another factor in the unionization of the armed forces was the disenchantment of the Congress with the military after the conclusion of the Vietnam war. The traditional paternalistic attitude of the Congress was replaced by a skepticism that reflected the feelings of the country as a whole. Political reputations were made by jousting with such visible windmills as “the Pentagon” and “the military-industrial complex,” though no one was required to define in detail the real problems involved. Further, with their acquittal, the defendants in the Pentagon Papers case were made folk heroes who, in the image of a Robin Hood, “stole from the Pentagon to give to the people” and were lionized on the college lecture circuit.
The traditional avenues for the care and feeding of military personnel were closing. The Air Force Association had never been more than an association, not a lobbying organization, and it chose to remain a professional organization—in contrast to the course taken by the National Education Association when pressured by the American Federation of Teachers. With the repeal in 1975 of the 1967 legislation tying military pay increases to increases in salaries of the federal General Schedule (GS) employees, military pay was beginning to lag behind that in civil service and in the private sector. The 1967 law tying military pay to GS pay was always an administrative convenience difficult to justify on economic grounds. Further, the policy of giving a percentage increase in pay only served to widen the gap in pay between the lower ranks (who were the ones needed to man the volunteer force) and the officer ranks (who were basically volunteers anyway). In short, the military service was left without an effective advocate.
The military employee had only to look around him to see the effectiveness of other special interest groups in lobbying with Congress. Of particular interest were the unions of federal civilian employees, which, following the tradition of postal unions, were among the most effective groups in Washington. So, though military unionism was viewed with great apprehension by the military establishment, it was tolerated and in some instances surreptitiously aided by the military bureaucracy in accomplishing the function of a lobby group.
By this time the reader is perhaps thinking, “A fable indeed! It’s a bad dream, an impossibility.” I would remind him that for almost two hundred years in the history of our country the idea of any public employee joining a union, participating in a union’s activities, or taking collective action through a union was almost unthinkable. Yet we find that, as of November 1973, 84 percent of all federal blue-collar civilian employees and 47 percent of all federal white-collar civilian employees were represented by a union. The federal postal employees are now exempt from usual Civil Service Commission rules and procedures. The Postal Corporation is presently engaging in collective bargaining very similar to that in the private sector. In September 1973, 52,000 public school teachers were “on strike.”
It should be further noted that there is precedent in other Western
countries for unions of military personnel. West Germany, Norway, Sweden, and
Austria allow unionization of the military in various degrees.4
Another question that usually arises in any discussion of military unions is
the question of the strike. The words “union” and “strike” are synonymous in
the minds of many public sector managers. In my judgment the argument that
unions inevitably lead to strikes is absolutely wrong at worst and specious at
best. It is an emotional argument that succeeds only in clouding the issue. The
Executive Order governing labor management relations for federal civilian
employees may be suspended at any time by the President.5 Further,
the authority to suspend any provision of the order is delegated to agency
heads with respect to any installation outside the United States “when he [the
agency head] determines that this is necessary in the national interest.”6
Is a union of military personnel legal? At least one civilian attorney would
hold that it is.7 Daniel P. Sullivan states, “A unilateral,
nonbinding form of grievance procedure, used in restricted areas within a union
movement and kept within proper bounds in the military, would appear to be
permissible under recent practices and legal developments.”8
It is not the purpose of this article to build a case either for or against unions of military personnel, but I would suggest that now is the time for discussion and thought on the subject. Now is the time for commanders to listen to their people, whether they speak as individuals or through NCO councils, EEO, JOC, or other organizations. I am not recommending the ritual dance sometimes played out between supervisors and their people, but, to borrow a term from collective bargaining parlance, I do recommend “good faith” discussions, with open communication both up and down the command chain.
It couldn’t happen here? Military personnel will never have any collective rights through unions? The same opinion was held for decades about public civilian employee rights.
All government employees should
realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood,
cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and
insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The
very nature and purpose of government make it impossible for administrative
officials to represent fully or to bind the employee in mutual discussions with
government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak
by laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly,
administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in
many cases restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules
in personnel matters.9
Unions of civilian public employees have made great strides since President Roosevelt wrote the cited letter in 1937. If the decade of the sixties was the decade for the public civilian employee to embrace collective bargaining, will the decade of the seventies see the formation of military unions? Eric Hoffer has said, “We are not worried about our footing when we are about to jump. It is when we have nowhere to jump that we begin to worry about the soundness of our position.”10 Perhaps now is the time to review thoroughly the Department of Defense position on unions of military personnel, not after we find we have been caught up by circumstances and indeed “have nowhere to jump.”
Air University Institute for
Professional Development
Notes
1. “Government Employees Relations Report,” Number 402, Washington, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., May 24, 1971, p. E-1.
2. “Government Employees Relations Report,” Number 466, Washington, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., August 21, 1972, p. A-7.
3. The “Ryan letter” of March 1973 was only a temporary setback, since it flew in the face of a cherished Air Force shibboleth, i.e., that any Air Force officer should be able to do any Air Force job. Additionally, once the navigator was given opportunity to command a flying organization, much like the blacks who wanted to eat at the dime store lunch counter in the 60s, he found that it was not such a big deal after all.
4. Perhaps the most objective study of the unionization of the armed forces in West Germany and Norway is that of Lieutenant Colonel James L. Quinn and Major Ronald V. Grabler, Military Unions: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Unionization within the Armed Forces, SLTR 24-71, School of Systems and Logistics, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, September 1971.
5. Executive Order 11491, as amended.
6. Executive Order 11491, Section 3(4)(c).
7. Daniel P. Sullivan, “Soldiers and Unions—Protected First Amendment Right?” Labor Law Journal, September 1969, pp. 58l-90.
8. Ibid., p. 590.
9. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter to the President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, cited in Wilson R. Hart, Collective Bargaining in the Federal Civil Service (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), p. 21.
10. Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1955), p. 93.
Lieutenant Colonel William V. Rice, Jr. (USMA; Ph.D., Louisiana State University) is Chief, Labor-Management Relations Division, Air University Institute for Professional Development. He is a Master Navigator with 7 years as a B-36 navigator-bombardier. He has been adviser to the Korean Air Force Academy; Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies, Louisiana State University; and Senior Instructor, Academic Instructor and Allied Officer School, AU. Colonel Rice is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and Air War College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic
environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air
University.
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