Talk Elections

I hereby propose the following legislation, and implore the Senate to debate this and offer suggestions for modification.

Clause 1.

Members of the Atlasian military, as well as all federal employees whose job functions are vital for the national security and peaceable order of the nation, are exempt from the provisions of this act in its entirety.

Clause 2.

All federal government employees of Atlasia are hereby granted the right to form a union for the purposes of advocating for their interests and for negotiating contracts with management.

Clause 3.

The President shall have the power to appoint, subject to Senate approval,  members of an Atlasian Competitive Contracting Committee. The Committee will be comprised of 9 members, though the number may be increased by appropriate legislation by the Senate as is deemed necessary. The purpose of this Committee will be to conduct regular performance reviews of all federal government departments to determine if privatization of these functions is feasible in full or in part. They will do this in accordance with established performance standards for each department, which will be determined by performance reviews of all Atlasian Federal employees, the standards of which will be determined by the managers of each federal department. The federal employee unions shall have the right to review these standards, and if they do not find them agreeable, present their own standards if they so choose. If the two cannot come to a mutally agreeable set of performance standards, both sides will present their proposals to the Competitive Contracting Committee at a public hearing, which will then be required to choose which proposal of the two that they feel is most appropriate.

Clause 4.

Employee reviews of all federal employees shall be conducted from time to time, but must be conducted for each employee at a minimum of once every 365 days, starting at their date of hire. These reviews will be conducted by managers according to standards approved of by both management and unions as detailed in Clause 3.

Clause 5.

The Competitive Contracting Committee will review the functions of each department and a summary of the performance reviews, conducted as detailed in Clause 4 and presented to them by the managers of each department, at a minimum of once every 365 days, and determine if performance standards are being met. If it is determined that they are not, the functions of that department may be opened for contract bids from the private sector, either in whole or in part at the discretion of the Committee. Sealed bids will be accepted from contractors, and will be reviewed by the Committee, and 5 will be chosen to present a presentation of their bid to the Committee at a public hearing. The Committee will then choose which to accept. Federal employee unions will be permitted to present a bid to the Committee, and if submitted, must be given the same consideration as bids from private contractors in the review process.

Clause 6.

Functions of the federal government that are privatized and outsourced to a private contractor by the above procedures will be required to be reviewed by the Committee at least once every 365 days, in accordance with procedures detailed in the contract with the contractor. Yearly performance reviews of the contractor must be conducted by the Committee to determine if it is in the best interests of the federal government to change to a different contractor, including but not limited to the federal employees union.

Clause 1 stinks.

If this bill fails, the Supreme Court will strike! :p

King, please stop doing that!

Do you not understand the concept that Judges do not prejudice themselves on cases that they might hear in the future. Because you just prejudiced yourself. If that (or anything similar) comes before the Court you will have to recuse yourself.

Sorry, I just had this urge to be like Al.

It is designed only to exempt the military and other vital security functions, such as the FBI or CIA for example. It can be slightly reworded to remove any ambiguity as to whom is covered, if that is the concern. The provisions of Clause 1 are definitely negotiable, but I anticipated a backlash against including the military and other such groups under these provisions.

It was a joke! It was a joke!

I have no real opinion on this matter.

King, please stop posting any polticial opinions regarding potential court rulings.  It is improper and threatens your impartiality.  Thank you.

Maybe if you spell out exactly which workers would be exempt.

I'll consider it. As it is now it is open to some degree of interpretation by the courts if someone challenged one's inclusion or exclusion; may be good or may be bad depending on how you look at it.

We'll get some more opinions first.

Overall, I think this is a great bill.  However, I will not vote for it unless Clause 2 is removed.

Do you really want this court to determine anything? :P

The unions are subject to yearly performance reviews, with the threat of losing their jobs to outsourcing to private contractors if they don't meet those standards.

What other objections do you have to unions that aren't addressed by that?

The rights of workers are protected, but they are still forced to compete with the free market on a regular basis. Seems fair to me.

Good point, although I wanted to avoid being too pedantic. If I have to, I can be.

Sorry, I forgot that as a justice, I have to keep an independent mind. If this bill ever makes it to the court, I will still preside at the case, but abstain my vote.

I have some concerns with this bill, but mostly pendantic ones for now.  The language of the bill implies, altho it does not seem to require, that there will be a single union for all federal employees.  Also since there are already federal employee unions, I fail to see what, other than providing for the outsourcing of Federal jobs. this bill is supposed to accomplish, and given the author I find it difficult to believe that is its sole intent.

So all this is is allowing government officials and workers to form unions and then appointing an organization to check that they are working efficiently. That's the jist of it isn't it?

Correct. It guarantees the right of all federal employees to unionize, but ensures that if they are failing to perform their job, the job duties that they perform may be contracted out to private businesses. It is designed to ensure competition between unions and private industry on a fair and equitable basis, with neither side having an unfair advantage.

Privitzation would still be done under contract from the government, so private industry that performs formerly government functions is still subject to review, and these services could be "unoutsourced" back to the government if the contractors aren't doing their job, either.

It will ensure that all services are provided as efficiently as possible for the people, with proper accountability.

No one is being forced to join a Union to be in government, correct?

No, there could be more than one union; that would be up to the employees, to have just one union or seperate unions. It's at their discretion, though I assume there would be one main union, with each individual department under its own branch that would negotiate contracts individually.

Does Atlasia already have federal employee unions?  While I am a strong supporter of unions, I also support accountability, and this bill is designed to balance these. It ensures that the people get the best service possible, whether that comes from government itself or from private industry under government oversight.

No, this bill does not require this, although the unions could, at their behest, negotiate this as terms of their contract with management. It would be up to the unions and management to decide; the federal government would not be requiring all employees to be unionzed, however.

It seems you've done your home work Nym. I am no Union hater and it seems that this would just help free enterprise.

My only reservation is that this seems to be just another way to increase fantasy government. Appointing 5 people to oversee that they are efficently ran. Why not just let the Secretary of Forum Affairs do that?

That would be fine. I guess the idea of a committee was more of a way to try to make it a "real world" bill. We don't actually need a committee comprised of real Atlasians, seeing as we don't have any "real" employee union members either.

So I was looking at it in terms of since we don't have a "real" union since we have no "real" federal employees (other than the cabinet members, but I'm just assuming for a minute that there really is a federal bureacracy and all, made up of people who aren't on this forum, you know, regular Atlasian citizens) we wouldn't need a "real" committee either, it would just be sort of assumed that you appointed committee members and the Senate approved them or what not. Of course, as the Presidency changes, so could the members of the committee, thus perhaps causing it to have a slant towards one side or the other, but that would be part of the democratic process.

So that was the idea there.

The usual default is to assume that unless we've done something to make Atlasia different from America its the same, and considering that  The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has some 600,000 members and that The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has some 150,000 plus there are probably others as well, I think it is safe to say that Atlasia has federal employee unions.

I think it's an excellent bill.

I would vote for this bill if Clause 2 were amended to include a provision prohibiting federal employees from striking.

I of course would vote against it in this case.

If I may give my two cents here I first think that the oversite clauses of this bill are well thought out and would probably reduce government waste and increase the efficiency of government. However, I am against Clause 2 stating that government employees should be allowed to unionize. I also agree with PBrunsel that instead of adding more people to an already bloated government we should just include this either under the Secretary of Forum Affairs or possibly under the Treasury department. I would consider a council with up to 9 members akin to using a shotgun against a mouse. Why create such a structure when it is not needed and can easily be done by either of the two secretaries mentioned above.

What a bureocratic cripcrap.

This bill has my full support. 

AFL-CIO supports this bill

Ok, true. It just guarantees that all do have the right to unionize then, just to clarify that and ensure that it can't be repealed by courts or some such. They do each have the right to form their own union too.

If the Unionization clause is to stay in this Bill then I support the addition of a sub-clause stating that Federal Workers Unions cannot be affliated with any Labor Organization. This would make sure that the Labor Movement does not gain control of the government through unseemly means and it also protects against conflicts of intrests between the government and Big Labor. While this is a suggestion I feel that it is needed.

Paranoia

With you as the head of the AFL-CIO I think that is a justifiable missgiving toward Big Labor.

As of November 9th 2004 there has been no official strike action.

Meaning what? If this doesn't pass their will be strike action? This is why I don't want Federal Employees as part of the Al controlled AFL-CIO.

As it appears that debate has ceased on this, I urge Senator JFK to bring this to the floor of the Senate for consideration, unless you feel that it should wait for the Amendment process to conclude first.

I move to amend the proposed Federal Unionization and Competitive Contracting Bill by striking Clause 2.

That is my intention, to get the constitutional crisis over before we look at the other bills. If you have any objections to this please voice them.

That is fine, though I hope the amendment process can be expedited so that we can get on to other legislation. While it is certainly an issue of great importance, and its significance cannot be understated, there is much other business that the Senate hopefully can get to in the next month before midterms.

Nym90, would you like a vote called on your bill now?

Don't forget about my amendment.

I would, yes.

Apologies, we shall vote on the amendment now and hopefully by the time that is over we will have passed the constitutional amendment.

Senator Stevennick proposes the removal of Clause 2:

All federal government employees of Atlasia are hereby granted the right to form a union for the purposes of advocating for their interests and for negotiating contracts with management.

All Senators please vote either Yea, Nay or abstain on this amendment.

Yea.

Nay.

yea

Nay

Nay

As the son and grandson of union members, I Sen. IrishDemcorat, vote an emphatic NAY on this amendment.

YEA. Godfathers Unnion bosses should be given the power to make the fedral bureocracy even more inneficiant than it is.

Given the entireity of this bill, would the government really be made more inefficient? Are the measures that I have proposed to ensure accountability of union workers insufficient?

Nay

Unnion workers would "ensure accountability" of other union workers. Are you kidding me.

I am not linked in any way shape or form to the Mafia and I am deeply hurt by this disgusting allegation

Have you read the full bill? Where did you get the idea that union members would be the ones ensuring the accountability? The Competitive Contracting Committee is not made up of union members.

I know. But since they would be jsut political appointees, with little conmpetence to do anything but stare at a computer screen wondering why does the ball in the screensaver keeps jumping, the ones who would really evaluate the performance would be those allready unnionised. It reminds of of one Dilbert strip:
Pointy Haired Boss: Remember our VP's visit? You asked why was your project canceled.
He promissed to give you an ansewer. That task was delegated on me.
You would like you to prepare an answer in my name. You have to suspend your new project until it gets done.

Well, if the President's appointees are as incompetent as you say, hopefully the Senate would not approve the appointments. There is no reason why it is required that they be incompetent.

I urge my fellow remaining Senators to vote on this amendment.  The massive backlog of bills and ammendments that need to be passed just seems to be getting bigger.

nay

3-6, the nays have it.  With the amendment defeated, voting on the bill in entirety can commence.

I vote Aye

Aye

Nay.

Nay

Nay

Aye

Aye

Aye.

Yea.

With this vote the bill has six votes in favour to three against. I now present it to the President to sign.

I urge the president to veto this bill.

Typical obstructionist tactics from you

This coming from someone who threatens to strike of his minimal whims aren't satisfied by the leviathan.

That sir, is an untruth. I have never, ever done that.

You're right.  I'm trying to do everything in my power to stop this bill from becoming law.  So sue me.

Damn you Jesse!

To Bono: And? There was no official strike action until the 12th of November, when a small strike of Kentucky Miners was balloted on.

There has never been a large scale strike. This is not a threat it is the truth.

I sign this into law.

President PBrunsel

In all fairness, it's not really obstructionist. He's simply stating something that was already well known.

Thank you, Mr. President. This is a bright day for Atlasia, and will lead to a much more efficient federal bureaucracy. This bill recognizes the rights of workers, while at the same time recognizes the right of ALL Atlasians to an efficient, effective government that is looking out for their interests first. Government's purpose is to serve the people, first and foremost, in whatever is the most effective way possible, and this bill helps to further that goal.

Yay!

Ugh.

Poopy.

Mr. President I have to say that I am very disappointed by this I would have hoped that you would have vetoed this bill.