White House Push to Revive Union Panels Off to Slow Start

President Obama's push to revive a network of councils aimed at fostering union collaboration inside the federal government has gotten off to a slow start, with the White House urging federal managers to do more to "engage" labor representatives.

A little more than a year ago, the president issued an executive order to re-create the so-called "labor-management" partnership councils -- a system of agency-level groups established under President Clinton and abolished under President George W. Bush. Obama's goal was to improve relations between the unions and management, and encourage them to work with each other more.

But an administration memo sent Jan. 19 to agency and department heads expressed concern that while directors have made progress in drafting plans for the councils, "work is far from complete" in making good use of them.

"It is imperative that management immediately engage unions on an ongoing basis consistent with the spirit and intent of the executive order," said the memo, signed by Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and Jeffrey Zients, deputy director for the Office of Management and Budget.

The memo specifically urged federal agencies to allow union involvement before any workplace-impacting decision is made, "to the fullest extent practicable."

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley, who sits on the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations, said the concern is that the lower-level councils are not forming and not getting involved as quickly as labor representatives would have liked.

"It's progressing slowly," she told FoxNews.com. "It's moving in the right direction, but it's slower than many, at least on the labor side, had hoped."

According to a report in the Federal Times, federal agencies have not been tapping into the forums regularly to resolve internal problems. The report said agencies still need to set up 612 partnerships, after having set up 619 of them.

Kelley said the partnerships, once established, can play a positive role in encouraging agencies to hear from their "frontline employees."

Berry and Zients suggested managers use the councils to hear from employee representatives on ideas for implementing the president's budget proposals, among other scenarios.