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Civilian workforce recruitment and retention top issues at annual union meeting

  • Published
  • By Stacey Geiger
  • Air Force Materiel Command Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  During their annual joint national labor management meeting on June 10, Air Force Materiel Command leaders and union officials came together to discuss the challenges of recruitment and retention of civilian personnel while being faced with financial concerns during sequestration.

Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, and J. David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, gathered with other command and union officials to discuss issues facing the AFMC workforce as well as what their expectations of the labor management partnership will be for the upcoming year. Due to furloughs, the last joint national meeting was held in November 2012.

"These sessions give us the opportunity to strengthen what I consider to be absolutely essential to this command's ability to equip the Air Force for world-dominant air power," said Wolfenbarger. "There is an extraordinary set of activities that we are held accountable for -- none of which can be done without the folks who come to work every day and are just extraordinary at getting those mission sets accomplished. This group represents a large part of that workforce in Air Force Materiel Command."

The briefings started with the Partnership Council's annual report provided by council co-chairs Michael Gill, AFMC executive director, and Troy Tingey, AFGE Council 214 president. They shared highlights from the Council's three meetings in the last year, including changes in representation as a result of AFMC's 5-center restructure. Since the last joint national meeting, Air Force Sustainment Center, Air Force Test Center and Air Force Life Cycle Management Center have obtained permanent membership in the Partnership Council. The Air Force Research Lab and Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center have rotating seats.

Ms. Paige Hinkle-Bowles, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy, briefed on strategic recruitment for DoD. One of the initiatives underway at the DoD level is hiring veterans; almost half of the DoD civilian population has prior military service.

"It is important to the Department and important to the administration, she said." We all understand the value of bringing veterans back in to our civilian workforce. We have a slight advantage over other civilian agencies because we already know our veterans and the skill sets that they bring and the leadership qualities that they have."

Hinkle-Bowles also described a DoD-wide performance management system that is being developed with a labor working group. The performance system will include supervisory feedback throughout the year versus once a year and will link employee bonuses and recognition based on achievements with greater transparency.

Dr. Todd Fore, AFMC's director of Manpower, Personnel and Services briefed attendees on a proposed demo project to train mechanics at one of the air depots in multiple maintenance skills. Under the plan, multi-skilled mechanics would receive a one-grade promotion. An independent study has shown this will save AFMC money and improved flow rates. Officials are currently looking at industry statistics to determine which pairings of skills would yield the highest savings.

The meeting also included updates on AFMC programs such as suicide prevention, sexual assault prevention and response, and the volunteer protection program. The AFMC financial outlook was also briefed to the attendees.

Cox provided the AFGE national update and said workforce planning for the future is going to be a greater issue.

"There are three components of DoD -- military, civilians and contractors. Both military and civilians have downsized, but we are not seeing downsizing of service contracts in DoD," he said. "Part of it is because of the artificial caps that are placed on the number of civilian employees. We have pushed very hard to close some of the loopholes on those caps. We have had some success this year and we are going to keep working. We are also going to continue to work very hard to see that our working capital fund entities will not in the future be subject to furloughs."

Wolfenbarger closed the meeting by thanking Cox for sharing his perspective.

"It's eye opening to understand the kinds of issues that you are willing to tackle and to take on," she said. "I think all of us have the objective to make sure that we are ensuring that our workforce is equipped and able and taken care of so that those critical mission sets we are responsible for can be executed. It's absolutely essential that we continue to work together."