Release Date: 11/7/18

WASHINGTON, DC – The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) today announced the selection of three recipients of labor-management grants totaling $441,753 to fund cooperative projects addressing cooperation as a means to improve collective bargaining, and fund joint, innovative solutions to proactively mitigate workplace issues, including quality assurance and the “skills gap” between applicants and job vacancies in fields such as healthcare, manufacturing and the building trades.

As has been the case in previous years, FMCS sought applications targeting a shortage of skilled workers for U.S. manufacturing jobs and other vital economic sectors. This year, FMCS showed special interest in applications that look ahead to training for high-tech jobs that will emerge from an economy where new technology such as artificial intelligence is becoming more commonplace. The successful labor-management applicants reflect both economic and geographic diversity, including diverse industries and regions.

“I am extremely impressed with the quality of applicants for this year’s grants program. Our grantees distinguished themselves by showing that collaborative and creative approaches can be used by both labor and management to jointly resolve workplace issues, avoiding potentially disruptive disputes,” said FMCS Acting Director Rich Giacolone.

“FMCS enthusiastically supports this type of joint problem solving and we encourage groups representing both sides of the table to work together to collectively succeed,” said Giacolone.

Under the Agency’s grants program, FMCS awards a limited number of competitive grants to encourage and promote labor-management cooperation as well as joint, innovative solutions to workplace issues.

Through its grant awards, the Agency supports best practices in labor-management cooperation as a way of improving collective bargaining and proactively mitigating labor-management disputes. The grants program helps foster the establishment and operation of joint labor-management committees at the company level, on a community or area-wide basis, within a particular industry, or for public sector employees.

The grants program, which began in 1981 under the authority of the Labor-Management Cooperation Act of 1978 (PL 95-524), has funded a broad range of projects including outreach, communications, strategic planning, minority recruitment and process development.

Please see the attached FY-2018 Labor-Management Cooperation Grant Program Funding Summaries.