The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) announced this week that President Trump intends to nominate members to the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP). The nominations will allow the agency to begin issuing decisions again as there previously were not enough members on the panel to have a quorum for issuing decisions.
Prior Status of the FSIP
No decisions were being issued by the FSIP because there needs to be four members appointed in order for cases to be issued. There are normally 7 members, however there had not been any Panel members since May.
According to Kimberly Moseley, the Executive Director at the FSIP, Panel members were discharged with a letter from the White House dated May 18. The staff at the Panel was not aware of the letters having been issued, and the letters were apparently not received until after May 18. Therefore, actions taken by the Panel members who had been discharged will not be effective.
The new announcement from the White House means that the Panel’s quorum of Members will be restored thereby allowing the FSIP to consider and render decisions in pending impasse-dispute cases.
New FSIP Members
These are the new Members President Trump intends to nominate:
Mark Anthony Carter
Mark Anthony Carter will serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2022. He previously served as a Member of the Panel from 2002 through 2009, upon three successive appointments by President George W. Bush.
He is currently a Partner at Dinsmore’s Charleston, West Virginia office, where he is the firm’s Labor Practice Group Chair. He has a national practice focused on advising employers on all aspects of relationships with labor unions.
Andrea Fischer Newman
Andrea Fischer Newman will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2022. She previously served as a Member of the Panel from 2002 to 2009, appointed by President George W. Bush.
She has served as Senior Vice President – Government Affairs for Delta Air Lines since 2008. From 2001 to 2008, she was Senior Vice President – Government Affairs for Northwest Airlines. Ms. Newman joined Northwest in 1995.
Before her airline career, she was a Senior Counsel and Senior Partner at Miller, Canfield, Paddock, and Stone.
David R. Osborne
David R. Osborne will serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2020. He is President and General Counsel of the Fairness Center, a nonprofit public-interest law firm offering free legal services to those hurt by public employee union officials. He helped to launch the Center in 2014, and he provides advice and counsel to clients, directs the Center’s legal strategy, and oversees all litigation efforts.
Karen M. Czarnecki
Karen M. Czarnecki will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10,
2020. She is the Vice President of Outreach for the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University.
Ms. Czarnecki previously served as the Director of Education at the Law & Economics Center (LEC) at George Mason University School of Law, where she oversaw three divisions responsible for legal education programs for federal and state court judges, state attorneys general, and Congressional staff.
Donald Todd
Donald Todd will serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2019. He is President of the Americans for Limited Government Foundation where he is one of the innovators in political research, having served as the Research Director for a presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Mr. Todd used his expertise to develop a transparency system for labor-union finances while serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor Department’s Office of Labor Management Standards under President George W. Bush from 2001 to January 2009.
Jonathan Riches
Jonathan Riches will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2019. He is the Director of National Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, taxpayer rights, public union and pension reform, government transparency, free speech, and school choice, among others.
F. Vincent Vernuccio
F. Vincent Vernuccio will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2019. He is a labor policy consultant and serves as a senior policy advisor for the State Policy Network, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and a senior fellow at the Illinois Policy Institute.
About the FSIP
Federal employee unions do not have the right to strike. There are also significant restrictions on what can be negotiated by a federal union with an agency.
The Civil Service Reform Act embodied the Federal Service Impasses Panel into law as an alternative to a union’s right to strike. A strike can be used in the private sector as a way to obtain concessions from a company. The Panel is an impartial third party that resolves federal bargaining disputes through an administrative process as a way to keep the federal government functioning and to minimize labor disruptions.
