Analysis of the Agency's Policies, Procedures, and Plans Regarding Essay

Analysis of the Agency's Policies, Procedures, and Plans Regarding Unions, Privatization, Pensions, and Productivity - Essay Example Agency and Unions: The USCIS recognizes the Federation of American Government employees (AFGE) as a union that offers collective bargaining services to all employees of the organization who are not professionals. However, USCICS does not recognize senior management of the organization, professional employees, and any employee who is excluded from such kind of coverage by the labor relations statute, the Civil Service Reform act, and chapter 71 of the 5 USC, as part of the employees who are under the protection of AFGE (Tischauser, 2012). On this basis, the agreement between AFGE, and USIS to recognize the labor union as the exclusive agency responsible for protecting unprofessional employees from the organization was certified by the labor relations authority. This was in case number WA-RP-06-0008 and this was for the purposes of promoting the principles of collective bargaining between the agency, and its junior employees (Bjorklund, 2012). The USCIS under the guidance of 5 USC 7106 has created a policy whereby in any negotiation with labor unions, the agency will not compromise on the following areas of its operations (Homeland Security, 2012). i. In the determination of its budget, mission, internal security practices, number of employees, and the organization of the agency. ii. Hiring of employees, their retention, disciplinary actions, and their suspension from service due to their inefficiencies in service delivery. iii. In taking actions for purposes of carrying out the objectives of the organization during situations of emergencies. The USCIS while negotiating with AFGE agrees to allow the labor union to have a representation in any formal discussions between the representatives of the agency, and the unprofessional employees. This is irrespective of the number of employees under consideration. These formal meetings will occur if there are grievances amongst the various employees of the organization, and as such, the presence of labor officials will be needed (Doak, 2012). The agency will also supply the union with an advance notice of the impending meeting, and the documents containing the grievances of the unprofessional employees of the agency. On this basis, the agency would seek the corporation of AFGE in resolving their various disputes with its unprofessional employees. Agency and Privatization: One of the policies of the agency is to privatize some federal support positions that are found within the USCIS offices in New York, Newark, Los Angeles, and Miami. The functions that USCIS plans to privatize include the offices that deal with the processing and handling of asylum claims. In as much as the senior leadership of USCIS advocates for the privatization of these offices, junior and middle level employees are against the privatization of these kinds of offices. This is because they argue that these offices are very sensitive, and they require a high degree of confidentiality. On this basis, privatizing the functionalities of offices that deal with asylum could risk the lives of asylum seekers (UCSIS, 2007). This is because the information concerning the asylum seekers could fall into the wrong hands, and hence endanger the person seeking asylum, and his or her family. Furthermore, middle level and junior employees argue that the support staff found at the federal asylum offices perform a