AFGE is in the process of setting up a council to represent and organize health care employees working for the newly reorganized Defense Health Administration (DHA) around the world. Once it’s finalized, the DHA bargaining unit will be one of the five largest agency-level bargaining units within AFGE.
The Department of Defense has transferred 45,000 health care employees from the Army, Navy, and Air Force to DHA, which previously comprised a few thousand civilian health care workers at military hospitals in the D.C. metro region. The transfer was mandated by Congress in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. It was the largest reorganization in the Defense Department since 1947.
AFGE represented more than half of the employees who were being transferred to DHA, while the rest were either unrepresented or represented by other, smaller unions.
AFGE filed unit clarification requests with the FLRA to continue representing workers who were AFGE members. Our petitions also included requests to represent other health care workers being transferred to DHA, and the FLRA last year ruled in favor of our union.
Dozens of DHA employees, AFGE leaders and staff met in Atlanta last week to lay the groundwork for creating the council. The union is in the process of selecting 12 temporary council officers who will work on the bylaws and all the permanent council construction work. A council election is expected after all DHA employees’ status has been ruled upon by FLRA.
The council’s structure will be similar to other AFGE councils such as TSA, VA, and BOP councils where there is a national-level collective bargaining agreement with local supplements that address local issues.
“This victory is a testament to our unwavering dedication to ensuring that every federal employee has a powerful voice in their workplace,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley. “Having representatives who do the work at DHA will enhance our representation and effectiveness across this diverse new agency.”
AFGE Deputy General Counsel Cathie McQuiston, who has been working on the unit clarifications and consolidation, said the transfers, which began in July 2022, are almost finished now with some employees in medical research and other non-patient care functions still transferring to DHA. Once all the transfers are finished, AFGE is going to have a bargaining unit of about 40,000 employees – the largest single influx of federal employees to AFGE since TSA was added about 15 years ago.
“It’s a great opportunity for AFGE. It consolidates what were disparate groups of people working under different working conditions, different agencies with different rules and regulations,” she explained. “This allows all of those employees to come together collectively and bargain and determine their working conditions. It gives them a lot more power in the workplace than they had when they were spread out before.”
In 2022, AFGE won the first election against another union to represent about 2,500 DHA Headquarters employees. A year later, AFGE was awarded our next certification at a market representing the first medical treatment facility certification. The same year, AFGE won the right to represent workers in 18 more markets after the FLRA ruled that AFGE should be certified for those units.
Other unions filed petitions to maintain representation of small groups of employees they represented pre-reorganization. The FLRA held several hearings and rejected these claims, finding that smaller groups should not be severed out from the markets. Instead, AFGE should be the representative of those locations.
The last election is expected in the next few months for the Indo-Pacific region, which includes Hawaii, Guam, Korea, Japan, and Okinawa.
McQuiston said there are challenges in consolidating and representing workers at DHA, including the fact that it’s a new agency that has never dealt with unions at the national level and has people in leadership position who have no experience or knowledge of federal sector labor relations.
Amber Wardin, a DHA employee and member of Local 908 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, was excited to be in Atlanta as the union worked to form the DHA council.
“It is such as amazing experience to be part of something that is groundbreaking. We are building a powerhouse with our brothers and sisters within AFGE,” she said. “I can’t begin to explain how amazing it is to be surrounded by wealth and knowledge and the amount of expertise that is in this room. We are going to create a stronger union and build our membership.”
R.D. Mooney, president of AFGE Local 908, got emotional when asked why he joined AFGE.
“Union is a must. I’m here because it’s a must,” he said. “We only have one chance to get it right, and everybody should be here.”
He went on to explain why a union is so important to employees.
“It’s the only way you can get a raise. It’s the only way that if something bad happens to you, you’re going to have representation. And if you’re a perfect employee, you still need to have your voice heard and the only way to be heard is through a union.”
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