A Closer Look
FLRA General Counsel Colleen Duffy Kiko
On September 11, 2006, Colleen Duffy Kiko, General Counsel for the Federal Labor Relations Authority, spoke to the D.C. Bar Labor & Employment Section.
General Counsel Kiko was nominated by President Bush in June 2005 and was confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term in October 2005. In her first year on the job Kiko was focused on one of the President Management Agenda’s goals of making the Authority more customer oriented. She has held numerous town hall meetings to discuss the Authority, and more specifically the General Council’s Office’s handling of Unfair Labor Practice Charges and Representation cases.
Kiko has set the goal of reducing case processing time partially by changing the pre-complaint settlement policy to eliminate settlement discussions prior to the issuance of a complaint. Of course, her office did not observe this new policy in the unilateral settlement of the Multi-Unit unilateral implementation ULP only a few weeks after her speech.
Another of Kiko’s goals is to educate the parties. She intends to create a regular and predictable schedule of regional office based training this fall and has eliminated on-work-site training for labor relations practitioners. She also hopes to have her staff update the FLRA’s manuals. In the meanwhile, all materials have been removed from the Authority’s website, making case filing more difficult for non-attorneys.
Kiko remarked that since 1996 ULPs have declined by 37% and Representation cases by 45%. She did not provide data on any intervening years, so it’s unclear if 1996 was cherry picked as the high water mark. She used this data, however, to justify a significantly reduced FLRA staff. Given the Imposed Work Rules for the ATC, TMC/TMS, and NOTAM bargaining units, there is no doubt that the last quarter of 2006 will vastly increase the FLRA’s caseload from 2005.
When an audience member asked a question regarding why the General Counsel so rarely exercises injunctive relief, a request NATCA has made in several of its ULP charges related to the Multi-Unit and ATC unilateral changes, Kiko said that the case must knock her off of her seat and that like obscenity, she knows it when she sees it.
When specifically asked about NATCA’s multi-unit case that had at that point been sitting idle for 13 months, Kiko said that she didn’t expect cases to take so long, but that it depends on the issues, and that some cases take longer than others.
Finally, when asked about her involvement in what had previously been the Regional Directors’ decision to issue complaints, Kiko said that she wants to see all complaints before they issue. She refused to comment further about her role or decision-making in that process, saying that the internal workings of the Authority are not something she wants to share with the world.
