The limits of sovereign management: The Southwestern Power Administration's relations with organized labor

This study examines the limits imposed by the sovereignty doctrine on collective bargaining in the federal government by reviewing the historical relationship between the Southwestern Power Administration (SWPA) and a group of its organized employees represented by Local Union 1002 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). Beginning in 1953, SWPA, a federal agency which markets wholesale hydroelectric power, developed an uncommon accord with its trade and craft workers which closely approximates, but does not duplicate, the pattern of collective bargaining found in the private sector. A key feature of SWPA's collective bargaining relationship which sets it apart from labor relations in most federal agencies is the negotiation of wages. By exploring the limits of sovereign management through this unusual case, this study contributes to the ongoing debate over the degree to which the federal government's interaction with its organized employees should imitate or differ from private sector practices.; The study begins by placing SWPA's labor relations program within the context of the federal government's labor relations from the Age of Jackson through the Great Depression, the debates in the 1930s and 1940s over whether or not the federal government could engage in collective bargaining, and the Interior Department's pioneering labor relations program which shaped negotiations at SWPA. The focus on SWPA begins in chapter four with a review of SWPA's labor relations experience prior to engaging in collective bargaining. This is followed by three pairs of chapters which document three periods in SWPA's collective bargaining experience between 1953 and 1985. Each pair of chapters recounts the highlights of negotiations at the local level with an emphasis on wage issues and examines the shaping of federal labor relations policy in Washington and its influence at the bargaining table in Tulsa. The study concludes with an evaluation of SWPA's labor relations experience as a guide to discerning the appropriate limits of sovereign management on both the process and scope of collective bargaining by federal employees with particular reference to the exercise of management rights, the negotiation of wages, the settlement of negotiability disputes, and the practice of systematic labor-management cooperation.