Frankly, partnership is the foundation of reinvention. The President's mandate to us was to forge a new spirit of cooperation between employee unions and management. The President and Vice President understood that no effort to reorganize for quality can succeed without the full participation of workers and their unions. If we want to change, we are going to have to draw upon the experience and wisdom of our employees and involve them in the decision-making process. The federal government is thus following the example of the private sector, which has increasingly recognized that confrontation rarely helps anyone.
Partnership offers a win-win scenario.
As John Sturdivant likes to say, partnership is the high wire and collective bargaining remains the safety net. You can't legislate good will, of course. You can only try to build it, one day at a time. That's what is happening. Partnership councils are being created at every federal agency and at every level of government.