Issues

TVA Unions Need Collective Bargaining Rights

While there are unions at the TVA with historically long representational and jurisdictional status, including the Engineering Association (EA), IFPTE Local 1937, which represents 2,600 TVA professional employees, the ability of TVA workers to collectively bargain is solely dependent on the decisions of management. This is unique and otherwise unheard of within U.S. labor laws, and only applies to TVA employees. TVA workers are federal employees; however, unlike almost every other federal worker, TVA workers’ capacity to form unions and collectively bargain is not governed by the Federal Labor Relations Act (FLRA). Nor do the workers at TVA fall under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which allows for collective bargaining in the private sector, as well as certain designated federal sector employees such as those employed at the United States Postal Service (USPS). In fact, there is no law at all that grants TVA workers the statutory right to collective bargaining or to resolve disputes.

The history leading to this disparity in labor law can be traced back to Congress’s passage of the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 formally establishing the TVA. Concerning labor-management relations, this act gave the Secretary of Labor responsibility for resolving TVA’s blue-collar wage disputes. This act also required TVA to pay blue-collar employees no less than prevailing rates for similar work in the vicinity. However, to this day, it does not apply to white-collar employees, including the 2,600 represented by the EA.

Despite the lack of collective bargaining rights, white collar workers at TVA successfully convinced management to recognize the Engineering Association (EA) in 1937. However, in the 1980s, due to the lack of legal protection and oversight, labor-management relations at the TVA deteriorated to such a point that Congress requested the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the situation. The GAO’s report, GAO-91-129, forced management into a 20-year agreement to grant the EA the right to bargain with TVA management on behalf of unit employees. However, this agreement will expire in 2012. Unfortunately, TVA management continues to take advantage of this existing omission in the nation’s labor laws in order to obtain concessions from the EA by threatening to cancel bargaining agreements.

IFPTE Legislative Recommendation: Congress should draft legislation that will end this injustice. As recommended in the 1991 GAO report, we believe the TVA should fall under the authority of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which administers the NLRA, similar to those rights provided to the United States Postal Service by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. Such legislation would not impact or change the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933, but instead grant TVA employees full and meaningful collective bargaining rights. This does not require the opening or rewriting the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.