By Stephen Losey, Federal Times

Federal unions hope that labor-management partnerships will pick up steam in 2013 after losing momentum last year.

One of the biggest experiments launched by the National Council on Federal Labor Management Relations was an effort to expand so-called B1 bargaining — collective bargaining on subjects usually left for managers to decide. But the experiment ended last year with few signs of success, and several top labor officials called the results disappointing.

The failure of the B1 bargaining pilot added to unions’ longstanding dissatisfaction with a lack of “pre-decisional involvement,” where agencies engage unions on workplace matters before they are decided.

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130110/PERSONNEL03