The union representing federal workers at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) in Washington, D.C., wants face-to-face meetings with senior DOE leaders about a planned reorganization that would bring nine field offices around the country under the supervision of a single, Washington-based manager.
The National Treasury Employees Union [NTEU] “is requesting direct face-to-face negotiations with EM management to reach agreement on a [memorandum of agreement] with common sense protections for employees,” a spokesperson for the union wrote in a Thursday email to Weapons Complex Monitor. “NTEU wants a frank and full exchange of views to promote productive negotiations and a successful reorganization.”
The statement was attributed to Jeff Eagan, president of NTEU Chapter 213, and Barry Clark, president of NTEU Chapter 228. The two already have already met with “many dozens of EM workers, met multiple times with EM Management, and repeatedly requested information to help employees understand the reorganization including who will supervise them,” according to the statement.
A DOE spokesperson in Washington declined to comment Friday on the status of top-level meetings with union leadership, if any.
“EM is proceeding with the reorganization process,” the DOE spokesperson said by email. “The EM reorganization will increase efficiency and improve coordination between the field sites and EM-HQ in support of EM’s environmental cleanup activities across the country.”
On June 8, Mark Whitney, DOE’s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management — and No. 2 nuclear cleanup official after Assistant Secretary Monica Regalbuto — said the agency hoped to complete its planned reorganization in early July.
As part of the planned reorganization, disclosed to NTEU in May, Stacy Charboneau, now manager of DOE’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site, would move from Washington state to Washington, D.C., and become associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations. In that role, the 20-year DOE veteran would be responsible for a new Washington-based Field Operations Office DOE plans to stand up as part of its second bureaucratic reorganization of EM since 2014.
Currently, field office directors report directly to Regalbuto.
In a May 26 PowerPoint presentation about the reorganization, DOE said the new Field Operations Office “promotes increased coordination and interaction between the Field and EM-HQ, and eliminates stovepipe organizations.” According to a draft mission and functions statement the agency prepared, Charboneau’s unit would provide “management oversight of, and direction to, all EM sites and facilities and champions their interests to ensure effectiveness and consistency in performance.”
DOE has said the reorganization would not result in any layoffs or demotions, and that the agency will not make the changes official until the union completes its review.
With a roughly $6-billion annual budget, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management employs about 1,400 civil servants nationwide. That includes roughly 160 in Washington, and about 110 in Germantown, Md.
