THE KINGDOM OF NTEU – Part I

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is a very successful union of over 100,000 federal employee members across 35+ agencies with tens of millions in surplus investments. In many ways it is a model for how unions should operate. But it is also more of an autocratic kingdom run by one person alone than a democracy built atop checks, balances, and shared power as the law requires. (5 USC §7120) I know that because I worked for the union for 38 years, held its second highest elected political office for over a decade, and remain a member today. Consequently, I am going to use the FEDSMILL forum to highlight what is questionable, if not plain wrong, with the union and offer some suggestions to move it closer to the open democracy it should be.  I will not only focus on certain aspects of the union’s governance, but also compare it to how three other unions operate. The first is the National Labor Relations Board Union (NLRBU) whose members are experts in labor law and union operations. The second is the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) which has the highest percentage of union membership among the feds it represents. The third is the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) which is the biggest federal employee union.  If I do this right, it should generate some serious questioning among local NTEU leaders as well as changes at its next convention, if not sooner. It should also help those in other unions consider what they want to adopt from the NTEU model. This first part of the series examines several flaws in the national elected leadership of NTEU. 

FIRST

NTEU elects two full-time, salaried national officers, i.e., the National President (NP) and the National Executive Vice President (NEVP). But there is really only one national officer, the NP, because the NTEU Constitution and Bylaws (C&B) assigns one and only one task to the NEVP, i.e., to do what the NP tells him to do. (Art. XII, Sec.3) Otherwise, the NEVP is powerless and duty free. The NEVP has no right to know how dues money is spent, surplus cash is invested, staff are hired/fired, charges against the union are handled, or the union’s various departments are run. He also has no right nor means of communicating with members or local elected leaders. Unless assigned tangible executive level duties, it is a fake job, established at the cost of over a quarter of a million dollars in dues money each year, to create the appearance that there is someone closely watching what the NP is doing.

NATCA also elects only two national officers, but rather than pay its Executive VP to do nothing, its C&B assigns the person in the job the duties typically performed by a union Secretary/Treasurer. (Art. IV, Sec. 5).  That gives its EVP the ability to at least see what the NP is doing and to speak out against the NP with facts, if needed. In contrast, if the NTEU NEVP were to speak out in opposition to something its NP is doing, the NEVP could find his phone, computer, and office access fob instantly terminated.  A reassignment to a new NTEU HQ satellite double-wide trailer in Barrow, Alaska would not be out of the question either.

SECOND

Another problem with the NTEU national officer structure is that it denies members the ability to “follow the money” if they ever do have fiduciary doubts.  In NTEU the NP is the only elected officer with the power to make financial decisions or see the books. There is no elected Secretary/Treasurer (S/T) in the NTEU system, even though virtually every other national union in the country has one. (In an act of high hypocrisy, NTEU’s C&B mandates that each of its local chapters elect a S/T who is constitutionally independent of the local president and thereby free to speak out about financial abuses. (Art. IV, Sec. 7) Inexplicably, that does not apply to the national organization.)

Why doesn’t NTEU have someone independent from the NP who has access to the books, spending decisions, investments, etc.? Simple. That allows the NP to do whatever she wants to with the union’s dues money without someone blowing the whistle. The NTEU NP can invest millions of dues money in Trump NFT’s, Chechen cryptocurrencies, or rare cockroach-derived blue wines; give a staff member gobs of cash to buy his silence about something the NP did; fund trips for her political supporters to meet with her and staff to control expected convention dissent; or hire anti-union law firms to crush any staff or local leader dissent.

NTEU does have an AC who performs all the duties of an elected union treasurer, but that person can be instantly terminated without notice, appeal rights, or severance pay if they so much as roll their eyes at some NP expenditure.  As an unelected staff person, the AC is hired solely by the NP, accountable only to the NP, supervised by the NP, and instantly terminated by the NP if she so wishes.  Unlike AFGE whose C&B states, that, “The National President may discharge employees other than elected officers only for just cause.” the NTEU NP can fire supervisory/managerial/confidential staff just for fun or to instill fear in other staffers.

If you read the NTEU C&B, you would swear that its Administrative Controller position (Art. XIV) is a national officer position that under law must be filled by an  election of the membership. 29 CFR §452.16 requires that “…officers of national or international labor organizations …must be elected.” The next subsection of the federal regulation identifies which union positions are considered officers stating,

‘‘officer’’ means ‘‘any constitutional officer, any person authorized to perform the functions of president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, or other executive functions of a labor organization, and any member of its executive board or similar governing body.’

When the NTEU AC position was originally created, the NTEU NP’s repeatedly stated in their annual LM reports to the Dep’t. of Labor that the AC was effectively the Treasurer of the organization, i.e., “’The responsibilities of the Administrative Controller are commensurate with those traditionally associated with a ‘Treasurer’.”  Yet, the NTEU NP, who is constitutionally obligated to enforce law and regulation has never moved to comply with that law. In fact, as recently as 2015 Tony Reardon, the then NTEU NP, slapped down a member’s attempt to question that with a four-page statement defending his right to have unilateral control of union finances. So, unless the  U.S. Dep’t. of Labor decides to enforce the law and make NTEU elect its Treasurer like every other union does, it will stay that way. As I will highlight in Part 3 of this series, it is virtually impossible to change that within the NTEU system if the NP does not want it changed.

Before I leave this flaw in the NTEU system, I want to note how bizarre it is to leave one person solely in control of tens of millions given who NTEU represents. The union includes members from the most financially sophisticated federal agencies: IRS, SEC, CFPB, OCC, FDIC, CFTC, NCUA, etc.  They know how vital it is to regulate the country’s economy to prevent abuses, yet they have done nothing to regulate their own organization.

THIRD

An additional feature of the NTEU system that boosts the NP’s power is its policy of having the national office declared as the official exclusive representative of any NTEU bargaining unit—whether it is a single local unit or one with dozens of locals. That gives the NP the power to decide which cases get arbitrated, who gets appointed  to national bargaining teams or other committees, which staff members are assigned to work with each local, etc.   Consequently, local union leaders have enormous motivation to “stay on the good side” of the NP.  AFGE, pursuant to Art. XXI of its C&B, often delegates its NP’s authority as the official exclusive representative to a council of locals in each major bargaining unit, giving them more control over what happens in their units.  That also permits the councils to hire their own staff. The NLRBU C&B stipulates the five national officers who serve on all term and mid-term bargaining teams (Art. XI, Sec. 1) and select the chairperson of its most active committees by a membership election. (Art. 9, Sec. 1)  The NTEU system allows multiple locals to form a joint council, but the union’s C&B gives them no power, no money, no staff, etc.

NATCA’s national contract establishes several bargaining unit employees as National Representatives. The union’s C&B Standing Rules, Subsection H gives the power to identify those people not to the NP but to the membership, “NATCA National Representatives recognized by collective bargaining agreements or interim memoranda of understanding shall be elected by secret ballot election by the respective bargaining unit to two-year terms.”

FOURTH

Finally, like any sturdy platform, there is a fourth leg underpinning the NTEU’s NP’s power, i.e., the staff. NTEU has well over 100 employees, primarily attorneys, who are hired exclusively by the NP without executive board input or oversight.  Moreover, while the majority of staff are covered by their own collective bargaining agreement that gives them due process and appeal protections, none of the department heads or other supervisory and confidential staff are. These are the people most likely to be aware of an NP’s improper orders or actions and to have the respect of the national executive board members. But they can be dismissed instantly without a dime of severance, appeal rights, or notice on the mere whim of the NP.  In contrast, as noted above, the AFGE C&B limits its NP’s power to dismiss staff only for just cause, ensuring that before the NP acts he had better be willing  to submit his reasoning to outside scrutiny and judgement.

Although each NTEU chapter has a salaried national staff person assigned to assist them with representational work, membership building, and internal politics, that person is solely responsible to the NP, not the local chapter president or its board. If a chapter tried to hire its own staff person, the NP could bar them from performing any representational duties or even entering the federal office where the chapter is located.

OVERVIEW

You might be asking yourself, “What about NTEU’s Executive Board and its ability to check or oversee the NP?”  Don’t get your hopes up.  I will cover their powers in Part II of this series.  Part III will address the ability of any member to challenge the NTEU NP’s actions, preferences, policies, or even electability. Part IV will identify those changes needed in the NTEU C&B to increase democracy and the awareness as well as involvement of local leaders in national union affairs.

As I wrote at the outset, NTEU is a very successful union. If you were an employee in trouble and the NTEU NP chose to help you, you would have good representation. But as we have seen with corporate, religious, and political leaders, it only takes one narcissistic, uncontrollable person at the top to tear down and destroy something that took generations of others’ blood, sweat and tears to build.