HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah — Team Hill hosted the Air Force Materiel Command and American Federation of Government Employees Council 214 partnership council meeting here March 29-30.
The mission of the partnership council is “To develop and advocate the means to fully implement our labor management partnership principles to make AFMC an exciting, productive and rewarding place for our people to live and work.”
A dozen AFMC and AFGE representatives met to discuss several topics, including civilian personnel initiatives from the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, the current hiring freeze, onboarding best practices, an overview of the newly negotiated master labor agreement, reasonable accommodation, the two-year associates degree program, information on violence prevention known as Green Dot, the multi-trades demonstration project, cyber-security awareness, and local union/management partnering successes and initiatives.
Patricia Young, AFMC executive director, and Troy Tingey, AFGE Council 214 president, co-chaired the two-day meeting.
“Partnership 214 Council met this past week for one of our regular sessions,” said Young. “Our session was very productive and the tours arranged by base leadership were outstanding. [We] Appreciate the support and hospitality of the Hill team for our visit!”
According to Tingey, the relationship between AFGE Council 214 and AFMC remains strong.
“We have many challenges ahead of us,” he said. “Although each party will face their own, it is good to know we have a great working partnership at the AFGE Council 214 and AFMC level to take on those that we share. We have fostered and grown this relationship over the years. In my opinion we need to continue to work together in order to beat these challenges to be mission ready, while we take care of our warfighters and employees’ needs.”
The partnership council represents management and employees from Edwards, Eglin, Hill, Kirtland, Robins, Tinker and Wright-Patterson Air Force Bases, as well as Hurlburt Field, Arnold Air Force Station and Air Force Metrology and Calibration.
The council was formed in the late 1990s as a way to pursue solutions that promote partnership while considering the legitimate interests of both labor and management. As a way of fostering this partnership mentality, Hill also holds a bi-monthly installation partnership council in which base senior leaders and the local union president are in attendance. Successes as a result of the local partnership include civilian workforce flu shots, installation civil engineering projects and facilities conversion to accommodate the incoming F-35 workload.
