for unions in the PUBLIC arena..none. The Fed (and all local) Government employees aready have gobs and gobs of built in safety nets it isn't funny. Think not try and fire one. The Gov could save Billions if they just got rid of the Unions.

While it's not strictly true that history repeats itself, there are often many similarities in outcomes involving like initiatives. Reading over the travails of the labor management forums set up under the 2009 Obama executive order, there is an uncanny resemblance to what transpired after the analogous Clinton era "partnership" executive order. Then as now, agencies assiduously gave lip sservice to the vague, lofty goals set therein, but essentially found bureaucratic ways of passive resistance to implementation. The reasons are largely the same in each case, i.e., agency management's power and authority to carry out organizational missions would be seriously impeded by sharing decision-making authority with unaccountable unions were the executive orders in question fully implemented. Both executive orders represented payoffs by the respective presidents involved to their union supporters, and if effectively implemented, would drastically hobble agency management's ability to meet mission requirements by shifting power to union leaders to in effect hold veto power over management initiatives, even when truly necessary to achieve mission goals. Agency senior career managers know that Congress holds them - and not their union counterparts - accountable for achieving mission goals, and act accordingly, subtly sabotaging union power-grabbing. Unions in the Clinton era also sought to get FLRA sanctions against foot-dragging agencies, but FLRA then said that it wasn't its job to enforce executive orders; that was rather up to the president (who chose to ignore the issue). Seems like a replay may indeed be going on here.