2012 Master Labor Agreement changes Published May 25, 2012 By Okalhoma City Air Logistic Center Manpower and Personnel TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- A new Master Labor Agreement has been in effect since April 1. Negotiations were completed in December 2010 by a team of Air Force Materiel Command management officials and the American Federation of Government Employees, however, the document was not ratified and approved until earlier this year. The majority of the MLA remained the same with exception of a few key changes discussed below. One of the changes is found in Article 5, Discipline and Counseling. When an employee is issued a proposed disciplinary action, they have 20 calendar days to provide a response (or their version of the events that led to the action) to the management official who makes the final decision. In the previous MLA, the deciding official had 45 calendar days from the date the employee's reply period expired to issue a decision notice. Under the new MLA, that time has been shortened to 35 calendar days. One of the more significant changes is regarding the Alternative Dispute Resolution program in Article 6, Negotiated Grievance Procedure. As of April 1, ADR is no longer an option for bargaining unit employees filing a grievance nor will it be an option for walk-in appointments. ADR will only be available for employees filing a complaint through the Equal Employment Opportunity process. Article 9, Communications, gives the local union president the right to send out periodic emails to all bargaining unit employees. Once the email process is initiated, employees will have the capability to opt out of receiving these emails. The implementation of the Single Staffing Tool in Article 12, Merit Promotion, is a new addition to the MLA. As a result, all employees are encouraged to utilize the resumé writing classes to help complete their resumes. Employees are allowed up to 24 hours to attend training and write or update their resumé. It is important to note that the verbiage says "up to 24 hours" and the opportunity to attend these training courses will be workload dependent. Article 15, Employee Performance, deletes the nine factor appraisal for bargaining unit employees. Affected employees will receive a nine factor appraisal for 2012, but not for future appraisal cycles. The nine factors will no longer be used to rank employees on merit promotion certificates. Article 33, Ground Rules for Negotiations, now requires the union president to be notified of changes to employees' working conditions. In the past, these changes were negotiated with the union steward assigned to the organization. A change in working conditions is defined as changes in geographical location, access to the work place, working environment, parking, or eating facilities, etc. This will allow the union president to have more oversight of the changes affecting bargaining unit employees. Article 38, Reassignment to Bargaining Unit Positions, is a new article in the MLA. The language in the article was taken directly from an existing Tinker Memorandum of Agreement, and instituted for all AFMC bases. The article details the procedures management will use in the event two or more bargaining unit employees are reassigned to a new supervisor at the same time, resulting in a change to working conditions as defined in the paragraph above. This is not a change for Tinker AFB, as the process has been in place since 2001. Overall, the new MLA does not contain a large number of significant changes other than those outlined above. If you have any questions, or need clarification on the intent of one of the articles, contact a Labor Relations Specialist at 739-3875.