Articles | Friends of FMCS History Foundation

FMCS Directors List

Rich Giacolone — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 17:29:11 +0000

Directors of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (with the date they took office listed and the President who made the appointment shown in parentheses), are as follows: The Biden Administration did not have a confirmed FMCS Director.

Cyrus S. Ching (1947; Truman)
David L. Cole (1952; Truman)
Whitney P. McCoy (1953; Eisenhower)
Joseph F. Finnegan (1955; Eisenhower)
William E. Simkin (1961; Kennedy), the longest-serving Director, departing office in 1969
J. Curtis Counts (1970; Nixon)
William Usery, Jr. (1973; Nixon)
James F. Scearce (1976; Ford)
Wayne L. Horvitz (1977; Carter)
Kenneth Moffett (1982; Reagan), served for seven months. (Never confirmed by the Senate)
Kay McMurray (1982; Reagan)
Bernard E. DeLury (1990; G. H. W. Bush)
John Calhoun Wells (1993; Clinton)
C. Richard Barnes (2000; Clinton)
Peter J. Hurtgen (2002; G. W. Bush)
Arthur F. Rosenfeld (2006; G. W. Bush)
George H. Cohen (2009; Obama)
Allison Beck (2014; Obama), the first woman to serve as director
Richard Giacolone (2018; Donald J. Trump)
No Director (2021-2025; Joe Biden)

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How a Union Supported a Republican Nominee for FMCS Director

Rich Giacolone — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 21:35:24 +0000

President Trump nominated Richard Giacolone as Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). Since his nomination, his confirmation has languished in the Senate until recently, when MTD President Hart and IAM President Martinez stepped in to support Mr. Giacolone.

MTD President Hart

“Mr. Giacolone served as the mediator of the Bath Iron Works strike and both President Martinez and I felt he was fair and acted in the best interest of all parties,” said MTD President Hart. “We wanted to support his nomination for Director of FMCS so we set out to move his confirmation forward.”

“After speaking to several Senate advisors, we were told that his confirmation hearing was unlikely due to the fact that his nomination had been held in the Senate for almost two years. Even if it were to be considered we were facing a time crunch with the Senate’s August recess,” explained Hart.

Knowing that the odds were against them and that they faced stringent timelines, Hart and Martinez both wrote letters of support and successfully asked AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to do the same. After speaking with Trumka to explain why he too should support Mr. Giacolone, Hart reached out to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Senate Leader McConnell and Sen. Collins and urged them to also support the Acting Director and add his confirmation to the calendar.

In a surprising move, the Senate took up Mr. Giacolone’s nomination on August 13 confirming his appointment with unanimous consent.

“Richard Giacolone is a fair and equitable choice for the office of Director of the FMCS,” says Hart.

“The Metal Trades Department will work with Republicans or Democrat so long as they support the mission of America’s working families. I was proud to support Director Giacolone, and believe that he will continue to be an asset to the agency. Labor’s support helped ensure he was confirmed, but his work speaks for itself.”

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2022 FMCS Reorganization is Finalized

Rich Giacolone — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 02:49:08 +0000

2022 Reorganization is Finalized

Acting Director

Greg Goldstein

Deputy Director

Javier Rameriz

Deputy Director for Policy and Strategy

Josh Flax

Associate Deputy Director of Field Operations National

Sarah Cudahy

Associate Deputy Director of Field Operations Regional

Beth Schindler

Client Services Manager

Kevin Buffington

Field Operations Managers

Region 1
Pete Donatello, Field Operations Manager
pdonatello@fmcs.gov

Region 2

Kathy Hall, Field Operations Manager
khall@fmcs.gov

Region 3

Tammy Poole, Field Operations Manager
tpoole@fmcs.gov

Region 4

Shane Davis, Field Operations Manager

sdavis@fmcs.gov

Region 5
Walter Darr, Field Operations Manager
wdarr@fmcs.gov

Region 6

Jennifer Disotell, Field Operations Manager

jdisotell@fmcs.gov

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Three Generations of Wagners #368 John M., #678 John A., #1234 Kevin

Rich Giacolone — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 18:36:43 +0000

The Wagner family has a proud legacy at FMCS. There have been three generations (John M., John A., and Kevin) who have served as commissioners for a total of 62 years. Kevin Wagner is currently based out of the Headquarters in Washington, DC.

The foundation for the Wagner FMCS mediators was laid by Kevin’s Great-Grand Father, Michael Wagner (1886-1976). Michael acquired his welding craft as a child laborer on the New York Central Railroad at the turn of the 20^th century. He continued this craft as a sailor aboard the USS New Hampshire in Teddy Roosevelt’s White Fleet. He married after his military service and raised seven children with his wife.

One of his son’s John M. (1918-2013), having served in WWII, returned home in search of employment. He found work at Westinghouse, where he also had a leadership role with the local United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). Taking advantage of the GI Bill, he entered Seton Hall University. He commuted by bus to his job by day and to school at night. It was fortuitous that he rode the same commuter bus as the FMCS Regional Director, Frank Brown. John and Frank engaged in many conversations about what the future held for John. Upon graduation in 1956, Director Brown encouraged John to apply to the New Jersey Board of Mediation as a state mediator. He served for two years before becoming a commissioner with FMCS in 1958.

John’s initial assignment as a field mediator was in the Columbus, Ohio office. He served there for four years before returning to Newark, and he was later assigned to the Cincinnati office in 1970. He retired in 1986 after transferring to the San Francisco office for a couple of years. He retired after twenty-eight years with FMCS.

John mediated collective bargaining sessions in the late 1960’s with American Cyanamid and the International Chemical Workers Union in Linden, NJ. The Director of Labor Relations with American Cyanamid was John Pfeifer. Little did the negotiators know that John’s son would date Mr. Pfeifer’s daughter, Joyce, and eventually marry in 1971.

John A. became interested in FMCS as a high school student. He entered a social science fair project featuring the agency’s mission. That gold medal project opened his eyes to the possibility of following his father’s career path. In 1973, John entered FMCS after working for Johnson & Johnson and Kimberly Clark in Labor Relations. His initial field assignment was in the Chicago Regional Office. Three years later, he was promoted to Special Assistant to National Director, James Scearce.

When Wayne Horvitz became Director, John was given the opportunity to return to the field in Washington, DC. In 1985, he was promoted to Director of Field Services & Training. In 1987, John became the first Director of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and also headed International Affairs. Under his leadership FMCS became in engaged in Negotiated Rulemaking, helped coordinate teams of mediators to assist foreign governments and design conflict management systems. After thirty-one years with FMCS, John retired in 2004.

John’s son Kevin was exposed to mediation from a young age. He attended a collective bargaining mediation with the parties’ blessing when he was 7 years old. The only instructions he was given was to be quiet and to listen to what was being said. Growing up he wished that his father had a profession that was easily explained to his classmates. When he told them his dad was a mediator, he often got blank stares and had to explain what a mediator did.

By the time his father retired from FMCS, Kevin was well into his career working in Labor Relations. He started with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) in their Labor Relations Department, worked for Arbitrator Jon Kaufmann and then moved to the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) eventually becoming Director of Labor Relations. In 2018, after 17 years with BNA he was intrigued when there was field mediator opening in DC. He applied and was hired in December 2018.

When Kevin started working, he was advised by a fellow mediator to not mention that he was the Agency’s first third generation mediator. The rationale was it should be discouraged due to the appearance of nepotism. In one of his first mediations a lead negotiator in caucus questioned him why he didn’t mention his family background. They had googled him prior to the mediation and read an article about his new mediator class on the FMCS website. The person encouraged him to mention his family’s legacy at FMCS in his opening statement because it showed he has a deep connection to the mediation process. Kevin has proudly referenced his family’s history in his opening statements since that day.

Kevin and John love to converse about mediation and its challenges. Kevin’s current mediator number is 1234, which could foreshadow that there may be a fourth Wagner at FMCS in the pipeline. He and his wife Jennifer have two children, Cassidy (18), and Sean (14). Only time will tell….

John M. Wagner is the 5th from the left standing in the 1958 Class Picture

Kevin Wagner is second from the left in the Class of 2018

John A. Wagner is the 5th from the right standing in the Class of 1973

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From the Ranks to a Presidential Appointment as FMCS Director

Jerome Barrett — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 16:18:33 +0000

Most FMCS Directors have been individuals appointed by the President from outside of government with experience in labor/management relations as advocates or neutrals. However, three Directors came from within FMCS and not directly from advocacy positions. These three individuals began their FMCS careers as mediators but then rose through the management ranks to receive a presidential nomination and appointment as FMCS Directors ultimately. Like other Directors, they had experience as advocates (Union for Moffett and Barnes and Management for Giacolone) before being hired as Commissioners at FMCS.

Kenneth Moffett

The first involved Kenneth Moffett, who had been a staff representative with District 50, UMWA, beginning in April 1958 before joining FMCS as a mediator intern in June 1961. Seven months later, he was transferred to Cleveland as a mediator—In 1967, he was appointed to the National Headquarters as a National Representative.

When Wayne Horvitz became Director in May 1977, he appointed Moffett as Deputy Director. Moffett remained Deputy Director until January 1, 1981, when Horvitz resigned to allow the new Reagan Administration to appoint a new Director. Moffett then became the FMCS Acting Director for the next twelve months. During that year, budget cuts caused a significant staff reduction. A suit initiated by several SES employees facing a RIF caused the Justice Department to determine that Moffett, as Acting Director, did not have RIF authority. In January 1982, the White House gave Moffett a recess appointment (which doesn’t require Senate confirmation) as Director so he could implement the RIF. Moffett’s tenure was dominated by a budget crisis requiring reorganization, eliminating 75 employees, and a shift to computerization. His tenure ended in July 1982, when President Reagan appointed Kay McMurray Director. Moffett had a distinguished career but was never confirmed by the Senate. Director Moffett passed away in November of 2021.

Charles Richard Barnes

The second involves Charles Richard Barnes, who joined FMCS in 1987 following seventeen years as a representative for the Laborers International Union. He served as a mediator, District Director (1994) and Regional Director (1995) in Atlanta. Director John Wells appointed Barnes Deputy Director in 1996. In 1999, he was appointed by Director Wells as Acting Director. Then, President Clinton eventually nominated Barnes for the director position, and he was subsequently confirmed by the Senate and sworn in in January 2020. He served briefly after the 2000 contested election until President Bush appointed Peter Hurtgen as his Director.

Richard Giacolone

The third was Richard Giacolone, who joined FMCS as a Commissioner in 1995 following 15 years as a management advocate. He was quickly promoted to Special Assistant to the Director (1998) and then Director of International and ADR Services (2000). In 2004, he requested to return to the field as a Commissioner. He served the Mid-Atlantic region as a Senior Mediator until he was appointed by the President as Acting Director in 2018, then nominated and confirmed as the 19th Director by the U.S. Senate. He mediated and resolved numerous major labor disputes, including the 2020 Bath Ironworks/IAM&AW strike. He is the second former mediator to be confirmed by the Senate. He is the only FMCS Director appointed directly from a field Commissioner position by the President.

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Ken Moffett – Washington Post Article 1981 (Have times changed)

Rich Giacolone — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 16:03:40 +0000

In 1981 FMCS was in the news often, and it’s Deputy Director Ken Moffett soon to be nominated but never confirmed by the Senate was making most of that news. Moffett did receive a recess appointment as Director in January 1982 to legitimize a Reduction in Force conducted under his Acting Director leadership but was replaced by Kay McMurray a Reagan nominee in 1982. The following article was written in August 1981 about a year and a half before Moffett replaced Marvin Miller as the Major League Players Association (MLBPA) Union representative. Another interesting WP article on his appointment as Executive Director of MLBPA can be found HERE. Ken Moffett passed away on November 19th, 2021, at the age of 90.

Reprinted from the Washington Post

What Makes Moffett Run

By Stephanie Mansfield

August 30, 1981

HE’S LEAN and lanky, with Buster Brown bangs and basset-hound eyes. Bags big enough to check at the airport.

“I’m really burnt out,” says Kenneth Elwood Moffett, 49-year-old federal mediator and perennial man in the middle, savoring the end of the summer-long baseball strike.

He’s witty and gregarious, charming and disarming, say friends, who call him Washington’s sexiest man.

“Yer kiddin’ “, he says, blushing, elastic lips slowly parting over a toothy grin. He takes a sip of Heineken and hits his best shot: the stare from those hazel, hooded eyes.

“I’m wound like a coiled spring,” he sighs. “It’s taking me a long time to come down.”

After two decades of settling strikes, Moffett — acting director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service since January — had his peacemaker working overtime this summer. First the air traffic controllers. Then the baseball players. Then the postal workers. Then the air traffic controllers again. That craggy, severely sincere, familiar face flashing across the evening news, sadder than a Keane painting on the wall of an Econo-Lodge.

He’s this year’s Hodding Carter. Mouthpiece of the moment. Spokesman turned star. “I must admit,” he says. “It’s been kind of overwhelming.”

He buys his clothes at Britches, drives a silver Datsun 280 Z (bumpersticker: I’D RATHER BE RUNNING), dines at Jean Pierre and at 6 feet 3 inches tall cuts an imposing figure striding down the street, arms folded, head bent. He likes to greet his secretary in the morning by announcing his weight (currently 165), and during the baseball negotiations, kept his general counsel Nancy Broff apprised of his pulse rate by periodically leaning over and whispering, “51. Top that.”

His half-serious goal in life is to open a running-shoe store, and he says he probably wouldn’t know what to do with more than $51,000 a year, his current salary. Probably buy more running shoes (New Balance). Or more classical records (Puccini’s his favorite). Or go back to Hawaii. (Hawaii?) “It’s great for running.”

But lately, his life has been one long ego trip: The Courtship of Ken Moffett.

“It’s really been crazy,” he says. “I went over to Baltimore yesterday and I was having a slice of pizza and a couple of kids came up for an autograph and I turn around and there’s this guy taking pictures with this zoom lens, about 30 feet away. I’ve certainly had my share of recognition, with the longshoreman’s strike, the 1978 New York newspaper strike. But this is crazy.”

He’s been on every television talk show except the PTL Club, and the phone’s still ringing. “I don’t know why they keep calling. I think maybe they want to go for a run or something,” he says.

Pursued by the press, hounded by autograph seekers and interviewed by Playboy magazine for its November issue, Moffett seems bemused by the attention. When he went running in Central Park during the baseball negotiations, the fans recognized the marathon mediator, not the ballplayers jogging alongside. And last week, when he went up to the Redskins training camp in Carlisle, Pa., to run with his friend Redskins general manager Bobby Beathard, two camera crews forgot the football players and tracked Moffett instead.

But there are other things on his mind these days. Serious things. The Boston Marathon, for one, which he’s training for by running 16 miles a day, daddy long legs pounding the path at Haines Point during lunch hour, sweat pouring down his neck, matting his salt-and-pepper hair. “Piece of cake,” he says. “I didn’t qualify last year, but this year . . . guaranteed.” He takes another sip of his Heineken. “Guaranteed.”

In fact, the twice-divorced father of three is so serious about the sport, it’s invaded his social life. The women he dates, he says, are “Runners. Lots of runners.” He smiles rakishly. “Ten runners.”

Ten women? At the same time? No wonder Playboy wanted to interview him. No, no, no, he says, holding up his index finger and making a circle with his other thumb and forefinger. The number “10.” As in Bo Derek. As in Nike-shod, nonsmoking, nondrinking jockettes.

“He falls in love once a week,” says his friend Jack Gentry, a Washington mediator. “He gets smitten.”

“He used to be interested in women with credentials, you know, women lawyers and things,” says Jack Donlan, a National Football League executive and close friend. “Before he was a title groupie. Now he’s a running groupie.”

And what makes the running groupie run?

“He’s a faded jock,” says his 33-year-old brother Jack, a postal worker in Laurel, Md. “He likes to be number one in everything he does.”

“A fast talking guy,” says Norman Walker, former FMCS information director.

“Tireless,” says Marvin Miller, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. “Bright, low key, with a great sense of humor and an excellent sense of timing.”

“Nonsexist,” says FMCS general counsel Nancy Broff, citing Moffett’s habit during the baseball negotiations of referring to the 40-man roster as the 40-person roster.

“Gutter smart,” says Donlan. “He finds a way to get his way.”

“One of the boys,” says his first wife Barbara Moffett, a labor relations specialist.

“Very open hearted,” says Pauline Moffett, his 72-year-old mother. “And when he laughs, his eyes dance.”

And how does Moffett see himself?

“Horny,” he says, laughing into his second Heineken, hazel eyes doing the hula. Strike One

On the 50th day of the baseball strike, Ken Moffett went through the roof. Literally.

“I was coming back from running with a friend of mine, and we got in the elevator at the office and the damn thing didn’t stop at the 9th floor. It kept going.”

Moffett called on the elevator phone for help. Then he called for water because the two joggers were dehydrated. The afternoon meeting started without him, as the news spread that Moffett was trapped. Then his first ex-wife called. On the elevator phone.

“You’ll do ANYTHING for a little ink,” she told him.

Moffett has a dozen stories, most of them unprintable, about the boys of summer. “Those guys were so crazy,” Moffett says. One day Phillies’ catcher Bob Boone was imitating Ray Grebey, head of the baseball players association “when the union guys walked in. Boone went over to the management side and started imitating Grebey by saying, ‘Trust me. Trust me.’ Baltimore Orioles’ Mark Belanger took about three steps and dove, head first, right across the table and slid right into his Boone’s lap.”

Moffett laughs, eyelids sagging like porch awnings after a heavy rain. “I’ve seen fistfights. I’ve broken up fistfights, but I’ve never seen anything like that.”

During the height of the strike, says Moffett, when the ballplayers were saying they wouldn’t meet with the owners because they didn’t want to participate in a “Chinese water torture,” Belanger suggested the players send in one representative: Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Fernando Valenzuela.

“He speaks no English,” Moffett laughs. “Except to say, ‘More beer.’ ”

Moffett loves it. Maybe that’s why he’s so good at it.

“Ever hear the story about Warden Duffy? He was the head man at San Quentin. Dave Garroway once asked him, why is it that you’re so good at being the warden? Duffy said, ‘I guess it’s just because I like people.’ ”

In fact, he’d rather be out arbitrating “than run the silly agency.”

Which he won’t have to worry about when Reagan appoints a new director, sometime this fall. Moffett, deputy director of the agency for the last five years, says he’s glad. He’d rather be settling strikes than bureaucratic disputes. His role in the agency has been described by one observer as “the glue. Others come in and become the head, but Moffett’s the one who’s holding it all together.”

There are 30 major disputes coming up this year, he says, more than enough to go around even with a new director. One of them may be a major football players strike, which Moffett is eager to handle. He shrugs off any suggestion of dueling egos within the agency.

“For openers, I get along with people pretty well. You can’t have someone doing this who’s acerbic, or walks into a room and p—-s everyone off just by looking at them. I know a little bit about the labor relations business. I know all the catchwords and the key jargon which make people say, ‘Hmmm. He is being sympathetic.’ ”

His style, he says, is the same one he’s been using for 20 years. It hasn’t changed, he says, only gotten better.

“There’s the tough guy approach. There’s the super humorous approach. Every one of our 300 people have their own style. You’re playing to an audience. I want them to know that I’m concerned about their problem and I’m from Washington and I’m here to help them. They have a book on me, just like they’d have a racing form.”

He’s learned a few things over the years. “The longer the strike, the more you wear on the other side’s nerves. If it’s an 11th hour settlement, you come away looking like a million bucks, the man in the white hat. On a two-week strike, you still look pretty good. But after that, you start getting on people’s nerves, because you’re trying to get a settlement and you’re doing things that one side or the other doesn’t like. You’re throwing harpoons all the time. This is where I came out as far as the baseball thing goes, with the owners at least.”

“Basically, he is what he appears to be,” says Marvin Miller, head of the baseball players’ association. While Moffett isn’t the best mediator Miller has worked with, “he’s right up there.”

“I really, really like Kenny,” says the Mets’ Rusty Staub. “I grew to respect him a great deal. For him, being the guy in the middle, he did an awfully good job.” And says Staub, “He jogs WAY much faster than me.”

But while the players grew to admire Moffett, the owners reportedly did not. Ray Grebey is said to dislike Moffett, according to sources. Reached in New York, Grebey had only two words to say, and they weren’t “trust me.”

“No comment,” Grebey grouses.

Says Rusty Staub, “Grebey doesn’t like anything.” Strike Two

Ken Moffett, says his friend Jack Gentry, “is probably the most frustrated man in America today.”

No, no no, says Gentry. It’s not his love life. It’s the air traffic controllers’ strike. For a man who likes to compare his job to that of a quarterback on the five yard line with 1,000 downs, sitting on the bench is a new experience for the super mediator.

“Right now, I’m really walking on eggs,” he says. “The president of the United States says there will be no bargaining. I’m kind of working in the subterranean area, making telephone calls from places where the phones won’t be tapped. Who knows whose phone’s tapped?”

(Moffett, friends say, thrives on intrigue.)

“I’ve been dealing with these guys PATCO for a lot of years. I’ve been through all their ups and downs. Naturally I’m pretty close to the whole gang of them, so it’s very difficult to divorce your feelings. I feel very sad about it. In fact, I may be watching — or in some ways overseeing — the demise of a labor union. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time with PATCO president Robert Poli and company and you can rest assured that the word ‘Armageddon’ was used more than once in the last 60 days.”

Moffett now says he deluded himself into thinking there would be no air traffic controllers’ strike.

“I couldn’t imagine it. It was like lemmings running into the sea. People falling on a sword. I used arguments like, ‘You have to crawl before you walk.’ Why do you want to fall now? I get this answer back: ‘We’re either gonna WIN big or LOSE big. There’s not going to be any in between.’ ”

His face reddens with anger. “I said that’s bull—t.’ ”

The controllers, he says coolly, “are not your everyday garden variety federal employe.”

Neither is Ken Moffett.

“That’s good,” he says. “Maybe I should get out. Maybe they’ll fix it so I’m gotten out after they read the Playboy interview.”

He’s on the road less often then he used to be, and that was 110 days out of the year. Which, he says now, may have contributed to the demise of his first marriage of 23 years.

He says the stress of being a federal mediator is not nearly as great as that of an air traffic controller. “Almost all of them have some sort of hypertensive deal,” he says. “They whoop, they holler and they believe that their situation is comparable to a pro athlete. They’re prima donnas. Egoists.”

Not unlike certain federal mediators.

“All of them except me,” he grins. “Mr. Humility.”

Which is what Ken Moffett would have you believe. His strength as a mediator, observers say, comes from his outrageous sense of humor (example: “At one time I wanted to make all of Duke Zeibert’s waiters federal mediators. They were so f—ing obnoxious.”) and his Alfred E. Neuman “What? Me worry?” style. His admirers describe him as laid-back. But his detractors call him a loose cannon, a mediator who tends to make recommendations in public before consulting the two parties.

“I was very dissatisfied with his performance,” says New York management and labor lawyer Joseph Barletta, who was involved in the negotiations during the bitter New York newspaper strike three years ago which Moffett arbitrated. “He didn’t impress anyone. I don’t think he is effective.”

Barletta is still angry over public statements Moffett made at the time. “If you’re the mediator, you’re supposed to want the strike to end. I’d say Moffett is well intentioned and hardworking, but I think he was ego tripping. He was on TV all the time, getting all the attention.”

As a mediator, Barletta says, Moffett is “quite average.”

It doesn’t help, says Barletta, “that in the middle of two forces, Moffett becomes a third force unto himself.”

Others complain that he doesn’t do much of anything, that he’s simply a nice, likeable, funny guy who keeps the opposing parties from resorting to physical violence.

“Sometimes I think he uses that as a facade, to relieve anxieties and tensions,” says Jack Donlan. “People call him laid back, but I compare it to a duck on the water. Underneath, he’s paddling like hell.”

Recently, he has come under fire by some critics for skimming off the high visibility, “sexy” issue strikes, and leaving the milk-toast ones for others.

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” says Paul Yager, New York-based northeastern regional director of the FMCS. “He gets STUCK with a lot of them.”

Still, Yager says, between the baseball strike, the air traffic controllers and the threat of a postal strike, Moffett “has had too much on his plate lately. Some people find that he is not dealing with administrative problems the way he should.”

Moffett shrugs off the criticism. After all, he’s been through a lot in the last 20 years, like the wildcat strike in Cleveland where Moffett showed up and the two parties wouldn’t talk to him. “They went to a hotel and settled it themselves.”

Then there were the two old guys who had been at each other’s throats for years. “The management guy had a bottle of vodka stashed in his briefcase and he kept putting it in his coffee. It was Saturday morning at the old labor department. Suddenly, he started screaming at the union guy. YOU A——!’ ”

Punches started flying. Moffett broke it up.

“So much of my life is hostility,” he says, “that in my own private life, I’d go anywhere to get away from it.”

On the surface, Moffett appears comfortable in the public eye, yet he is intensely protective of his privacy. Above all, he is a man who has worked long and hard on his Image: trustworthy, guiless, likeable.

“He uses, and very effectively, his open and candid manner to get close to people,” says Donlan. “He’ll tell you his problems. All of a sudden, you find yourself telling him yours.”

“I think it goes back to survival of the fittest,” says Moffett, the son of a union organizer. “As a skinny kid, growing up in a lot of cities and having to make my own way, or in most instances, run home so I wouldn’t get beat up. You can talk your way out of situations or try to. I think this was the reason that after eight schools in eight states in eight years, I ended up the most popular kid in my high school when I was a senior. I’ve thought about that and I think I know why. I was bopping all around. It was a matter of surviving.

“Saying all the things they want to hear, being instantly acceptable, you get pretty good at it,” he says. “But it can f— up relationships because they think that right away, they’re being manipulated. It gets to be too easy. Life almost becomes a game.”

“He makes friends easily,” says his 36-year-old brother Brent, a hairdresser at Garfinckel’s who coifs several of his older brother’s ex-girlfriends. “But it’s really hard for him to open up.”

He was, and still is, the nine-letter man, reluctantly cascading into middle age. “When he started getting gray he started coloring his hair,” says Brent Moffett. “The drug store routine. His hair turned orange. It was funny. No matter what he did, in a matter of weeks it all washed out.”

He no longer attempts to hide the gray, but he’s still King of the Prom, masking the hurt of a wrenching divorce and his bouts with psychotherapy behind one-liners, glib come-backs and that crooked hound-dog smile.

“I think he’s found that’s what has made him so successful at what he does,” says NFL executive Donlan. “Everybody wants to mother him. He reminds you of Dennis the Menace.” Sons and Lovers

Kenneth Moffett was born in Lykens, Pa., the eldest of four boys. His father, Elwood Moffett, was president of District 50, the largest branch of the United Mine Workers with 250,000 members.

Elwood Moffett was, by all accounts, a stern, heavy-handed man of Welsh descent with a strong interest in sports.

“His word was law, right or wrong,” says Brent Moffett. “He was very much the disciplinarian. Very macho.”

All four boys in the tightly knit family grew up trying to please their father. Especially Ken. He excelled in sports, if not in scholastics, as Moffett moved from one city to the next.

By his last year in high school, the family had settled in Langley Park. Ken Moffett was the split end on the football team, captain of his basketball team and star southpaw pitcher at Mt. Rainier High School.

“All the girls wanted him,” says Jack Moffett, his youngest brother.

He won a scholarship to the University of Maryland, but college was interupted by the Korean War. Moffett joined the Navy and was stationed in Norfolk, Va. He married his high school sweetheart there in 1952 and came home to finish college with a degree in education, hoping to become a teacher.

But teaching jobs were scarce, so in 1958 young Moffett joined his father as a staff representative, working for District 50. When things inside the United Mine Workers got rough (Elwood Moffett supported Jock Yablonski, who was later slain in a bitter union power struggle), Ken Moffett, in 1961, joined the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service as an intern. After the internship, Moffett decided to stay on, becoming a field mediator in Cleveland, and eventually, all-around troubleshooter in Washington.

“I guess all fathers who have sons in the labor movement would like to have their son’s become president of that organization. And I think my father felt the same way. He was kind of upset that I didn’t go back to the United Mine Workers, but I went through one of these periods where I wanted to do it myself, with no help from anybody and that’s the way it’s always been.”

Moffett is known as a mediator with a bias toward collective bargaining, if not downright pro-union, although he insists, he has to “play it straight down the middle.”

“Ken has compassion for people,” says Brent Moffett. “A sense of fair play. And I guess, because of my father, a cheer for the underdog.”

But while his career progressed, his first marriage floundered. In 1975, he was divorced and won custody of his three children.

“I was a basket case,” he says simply.

Moffett, formerly a Methodist, converted to Catholicism around this time, a personal decision he doesn’t like to discuss.

Three years later, he met a young labor relations specialist and took the plunge again. The marriage lasted eight months. “We were both on the rebound,” he says now. “It was just crazy on both our parts. We’re good pals now. I did a lot of growing up, subsequent to that.”

Would he get married again? “I think I could,” Moffett says.

“He needs to be married,” says Donlan. “He needs somebody to argue with. Part of the whole game with him is intrigue. He needs the intrigue. If there is an easy way to do something, or a circuitous way, he chooses the circuitous.”

Moffett, according to his brother Brent, never stopped trying to please his parents. His father died of a heart attack in 1973. His mother still lives in Clearwater, Fla.

“That’s the first thing he said when he told me about the Playboy interview,” says the younger brother. “He said, ‘How am I gonna give this to Mom?’ ”

Moffett lives in a modest ranch house on a quiet suburban street in Adelphi, Md., with his three children, Laura, 24, who is studying law enforcement at the University of Maryland, Kenny Jr., 22, a political science major at Maryland and 16-year-old John, a student at High Point High School who wants to be an actor.

Moffett speaks of his children with pride, especially his eldest son who recently served in the Marine Corps.

“He wrote me a letter from Korea,” says Moffett, “talking about his grandfather, and his great grandfather who were both in the labor union, and yours truly who was part of his heritage, and that he should also follow in the labor relations business. I said, ‘Oh my God, not another one.’ ”

His kids, he says, find their father’s fame amusing. So does Moffett.

He tells the story of getting into a taxi in Manhattan after an impromptu news conference on the sidewalk during the height of the baseball negotiations. He and Nancy Broff got in the back seat and the cabbie turned to them and said, “Which one of youse is famous?”

Broff nodded in Moffett’s direction.

“Oh yeah? Can I get your autograph for the little lady?” the cab driver said.

Moffett took a small piece of paper, signed his name and passed it to the admirer. The driver looked at it and said, “Ken Moffett. Who’s Ken Moffett?”

“I am,” Moffett replied.

“Yeah, but what do you do?” the driver asked.

“I’m a federal mediator,” Moffett replied.

“You mean you’re not a baseball player?”

“No.”

With that, the cab driver crumpled the paper and tossed it out the window.

“It’s vicious out there,” Moffett laughs. “Just vicious.”

The post Ken Moffett – Washington Post Article 1981 (Have times changed) first appeared on Friends of FMCS History Foundation.

FMCS and Myanmar (Burma)

Rich Giacolone — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 21:59:06 +0000

Did you know that FMCS in conjunction with the ILO worked with the Government of Myanmar in 2015-2016 to help establish dispute resolution capabilities in the newly formed democratic government led by Aung San Suu Kyi? Things have changed much since then in Myanmar with a military takeover of Government in 2021.

FMCS worked with the Burmese Ministry of Labor and Employment to improve its dispute resolution system through training and “train-the-trainer” workshops for conciliation bodies, presentations about the American system of labor relations, and technical assistance support for the establishment of a legal education center to provide ongoing training in labor relations and dispute resolution best practices.

The featured picture in this post shows Commissioner John Gray in Burma in front of a poster of Aung San Suu Kyi. (She was arrested after the military takeover and still remains in custody.) John was one of many Commissioners who were assigned and traveled to Burma on this project, including Director Allison Beck and Director Richard Giacolone.

Commissioner Gray in Burma

Flip Chart from FMCS Burma Training Program in 2015

The post FMCS and Myanmar (Burma) first appeared on Friends of FMCS History Foundation.

FMCS and Baseball

Rich Giacolone — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 20:18:11 +0000

FMCS has been in the news of late connected to the Major League Baseball lockout. As indicated in the article linked here Major League Baseball requested assistance from FMCS.

UPDATE Letter from MLB Commissioner

To Our Fans:

I had hoped against hope that I would not have to be in the position of canceling games. We worked hard to avoid an outcome that is bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs.

I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort on the part of either party. The Players came here for nine days, worked hard and tried to make a deal. I appreciate their effort.

Our committee of Club representatives committed to the process, offered compromise after compromise, and hung in past the deadline to exhaust all efforts to reach an agreement.

So far, we have failed to achieve our mutual goal of a fair deal. The unfortunate thing is that the agreement we have offered has huge benefits for fans and players.

We have listened to the Players Association throughout this process. A primary goal of the Players Association has been to increase pay for younger players. As I have said previously, we agree and share that goal. We offered to raise the minimum salary to $700,000, an increase of $130,000 from 2021. We offered to create an annual bonus pool of $30 million for the very best young players. In total, we are offering a 33% raise to nearly two-thirds of Major League players and adding more than $100 million annually in additional compensation for younger players.

The proposal also addressed player and fan concerns about issues like service time and competitive issues. Baseball would for the first time have a draft lottery — the most aggressive in professional sports. Also, for the first time ever, we agreed to an incentive system to encourage clubs to promote top prospects to their Opening Day rosters. We also proposed that the first and second-place finishers in the Rookie of the Year voting in each league would receive a full year of service.

The MLBPA asked to make free agency more robust. For the first time ever, we agreed to eliminate direct draft pick compensation, a change the MLBPA has sought for decades. On the Competitive Balance Tax, we offered a significantly larger first-year increase than in the last two agreements, bearing in mind that the Competitive Balance Tax is the only mechanism in the agreement that protects some semblance of a level playing field among clubs.

The International Draft would have more fairly allocated talent among the clubs and reduced abuses in some international markets.

We also listened to our fans. The expanded playoffs would bring the excitement of meaningful September baseball and postseason baseball to fans in more of our markets. While we preferred a 14-team format, when the format became a significant obstacle, we listened to the players’ concerns, and offered to compromise by accepting their 12-team format.

Finally, we offered a procedural agreement that would allow for the timely implementation of sorely needed rules like the pitch timer and elimination of shifts to improve the entertainment value of the game on the field. And we agreed to the universal DH.

So, what is next? The calendar dictates that we are not going to be able to play the first two series of regular season games and those games are officially canceled. We are prepared to continue negotiations. We have been informed that the MLBPA is headed back to New York meaning that no agreement is possible until at least Thursday. Currently, camps could not meaningfully operate until at least March 8th, leaving only 23 days before scheduled Opening Day.

We played without an agreement in 1994 and the players went on strike in August, forcing the cancellation of the World Series. It was a painful chapter in our game’s history. We cannot risk such an outcome again for our fans and our sport.

The Clubs and our owners fully understand just how important it is to our millions of fans that we get the game on the field as soon as possible. To that end, we want to bargain and we want a deal with the Players Association as quickly as possible.

Statement from the Major League Baseball Players Association

JUPITER, March 1 – Rob Manfred and MLB’s owners have cancelled the start of the season. Players and fans around the world who love baseball are disgusted, but sadly not surprised.

From the beginning of these negotiations, Players’ objectives have been consistent—to promote competition, provide fair compensation for young Players, and to uphold the integrity of our market system. Against the backdrop of growing revenues and record profits, we are seeking nothing more than a fair agreement.

What Rob Manfred characterized as a “defensive lockout” is, in fact, the culmination of a decades-long attempt by owners to break our Player fraternity. As in the past, this effort will fail. We are united and committed to negotiating a fair deal that will improve the sport for Players, fans and everyone who loves our game.

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FMCS has an interesting history with major league sports from soccer, hockey, football, and baseball (Look for a future article about sports mediation cases).

Former Director Bill Usery (after leaving FMCS) was involved in the 1994 negotiations along with President Clinton and many others, but as the below picture indicates the 1994 World Series was never played.

Baseball from the 1994 World Series that was not played due to a Strike, and a photo of some key players in the 1994 negotiations, including Director Usery.

Former Director Ken Moffett mediated the 1981 MLB dispute then became the Players Association Executive Director. After leaving FMCS, Moffett was hired in December 1982 as the second executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association and took over on Jan. 1, 1983, when Marvin Miller retired ahead of his 66th birthday. Moffett was given a three-year contract but lasted just 10 1/2 months and was fired that Nov. 22 by the union’s executive board. Washington Post article about Director Moffett with references to the 1981 MLB dispute.

1981 Baseball Strike from Fandom.com

The 1981 baseball strike was the fifth work stoppage in Major League Baseball history. The strike began on June 12 and forced the cancellation of 713 games (or 38 percent of the Major League schedule) in the middle of the regular season.

An estimated $146 million was lost in player salaries, ticket sales, broadcast revenues, and concession revenues. The players lost $4 million a week in salaries while the owners suffered a total loss of $72 million.

The Strike Deadline

The Executive Board of the Players’ Association voted unanimously to strike on May 29 due to the unresolved issue of free agent compensation. The deadline was extended briefly, however, after the Players’ Association’s unfair labor complaint was heard by the National Labor Relations Board.

Reasons for the Strike

The strike was called in response to the owners desperately wanting to win back the prerogatives over the players. The owners had already lost at the bargaining table and in the courts on the issue of the free agency draft. At issue during the seven weeklong negotiations was the owner’s demanding compensation for losing a free agent player to another team. The compensation in question was a player who was selected from the signing team’s roster (not including 12 “protected” players). The players maintained that any form of compensation would undermine the value of free agency.

Reaction

Although the strike was called by the players, many sportswriters and even fans placed most of the blame on the owners. Sports Illustrated reflected this particular opinion loud and clear with the cover headline that read “Strike! The Walkout the Owners Provoked.” One of the reasons the owners doled out such hefty contracts from 1978-1981 (43 players each negotiated contracts worth over $1 million during this period) was because they were afraid of losing disgruntled stars in the free agency reentry draft. So, the owners paid their players the so-called new going rate in order to keep them from going elsewhere.

The Strike Ends

On July 31, 1981, a compromise was reached. In the settlement, teams that lost a “premium” free agent could be compensated by drawing from a pool of players left unprotected from all of the clubs rather than just the signing club. The settlement gave the owners a limited victory on the compensation issue.

Reportedly, the negotiations were so bitter that when a settlement was finally reached, Major League Baseball Players Association representative Marvin Miller and the owners’ negotiator, Ray Grebey, refused to pose with each other for the traditional “peace ceremony” photograph.

The post FMCS and Baseball first appeared on Friends of FMCS History Foundation.

The Wall Street Journal Article

Rich Giacolone — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:43:52 +0000

On May 31, 2001, during the waning months of the Richard Barnes Directorship (Director Peter Hurtgen was confirmed in 2002 after the lengthy transition due to the legal challenge of the 2000 election) an article was published by the Wall Street Journal which focused on the ever-growing non-labor mediation work of FMCS. Many were pleased with the article but some, including the Director, were concerned that the article “was fraught with misquotes, omissions, and inaccuracies which trivializes the work of this Agency.” “I said to Ms. Chen in my interview that FMCS is a model government agency; it is non-regulatory, non-enforcement, and performance dependent. If we do not add value to the collective bargaining or ADR process, we would not exist, said Barnes”. Why that reaction? Many mediators at the agency at that time were still adapting reluctantly to the new non-labor mediation work and did not want the ADR work to be spotlighted in a positive way.

Here is the Article Reprinted

Government Labor Mediation Agency Expands Its Repertoire at $85 an Hour

By Kathy Chen Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

May 31, 2001 11:59 pm ET

WASHINGTON — In 1947, the year the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service was formed to ease labor-management conflicts, there were 270 strikes, each one idling more than 1,000 workers. Last year, there were 39.

So what’s an obscure government agency charged with preventing labor walkouts to do? Diversify, of course. This one is becoming referee to the world — at $85 an hour.

When Hasidic Jews in Postville, Iowa, bickered with officials of the predominantly Christian town over wastewater treatment, both sides turned to the FMCS. Two mediators isolated negotiators in separate hotel rooms for four days, shuttling back and forth until the parties hammered out a draft agreement that called for splitting the cost of building a water-treatment plant for a kosher meat-processing factory.

When rival gangs in a Florida high school couldn’t get along, FMCS mediators taught them how to use a computer chat-room program so they could resolve differences in private, secure discussions with less risk of fist fights. In Indonesia, when hostile ethnic groups prepared to trade Molotov cocktails, a U.S. mediator helped defuse tensions by suggesting that the local power plant postpone a planned power outage.

And when a unit of Bechtel Corp. wanted to avoid a repeat of racial violence that had plagued a previous job, it brought FMCS mediators to a construction site on St. Croix to teach managers there to be more sensitive to the locals.

“We’re constantly looking for new places to transfer our skills, or there’s no reason for us to exist,” says C. Richard Barnes, the agency’s director. The mediators also help unions and companies get along in between contract talks. And strikes, although there are fewer of them, still occupy a great deal of the mediators’ time: Recent walkouts have been more adversarial, have dragged on over longer periods and have affected major segments of the economy more than they once did.

Congress created the FMCS shortly after World War II, as emboldened G.I.s returned to the work force and strikes surged. Forty years later, in the 1980s, the agency was well-positioned for the rise of a new field, “alternative dispute resolution,” which grew as potential litigants looked to solve conflicts outside congested courts. In 1990, Congress authorized the FMCS to mediate nonlabor cases for government agencies. Since then, it has expanded into overseas disputes and the private sector in the U.S. The FMCS employs 218 mediators today, down from a high of 315 in the late 1970s.

The FMCS’s nonlabor work makes up about a quarter of its workload, generating $1.4 million in fees last year. Its hourly rate of $85 is a bargain compared with hourly fees of $200 to $300 that are common among for-profit providers. Some private mediators fret about unfair competition. “Any time an organization can significantly underbid the private sector based on government subsidies, that’s a troubling issue,” says Daniel Bowling, chief executive of the Association for Conflict Resolution, a Washington trade group. The FMCS says it doesn’t charge more because it is a government agency and only wants to cover costs.

Other providers say there’s plenty of conflict to go around. “We certainly think the more the merrier,” says retired Judge Curtis von Kann, a mediator with Washington-based Judicial Arbitration Mediation Service, known as JAMS, the largest private provider of alternative dispute resolution. “There’s a tremendous demand for these services, and it’s very healthy to have different providers, including the government,” he says.

The FMCS says it helps parties reach a resolution in 78% of nonlabor cases, slightly less than the 90% success rate it claims for labor cases. Unions and management are usually in a long-term relationship, with equal stakes to lose; the parties in other sorts of cases “don’t have as much impetus to save the relationship,” says Mr. Barnes.

Early in his FMCS career, John Wagner mediated in labor talks such as those between the machinists’ union and smokestack manufacturers over wages and health benefits. In the early 1980s, he volunteered for nonlabor disputes. His more recent workload has included brokering peace between two bickering officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons (he suggested they go out to lunch) to trying to persuade medical schools to accept a 13-year-old applicant.

No one questions a labor mediator’s legitimacy. But in other types of disputes, Mr. Wagner sometimes has to defend his presence. When Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat, called FMCS mediators to reconcile motorboat and snowmobile users and environmentalists fighting over two patches of Minnesota wilderness, the agency was accused of aiding the senator’s re-election campaign. Mr. Wagner says he had to craft a plan for news conferences and op-ed pieces “to educate people” that mediators are “facilitators of dialogue,” not “decision-makers.”

In that conflict, FMCS mediators helped resolve a dozen smaller issues in 1997. Then Congress settled the central question — in favor of the vehicle users. That led some people involved to question the value of FMCS’s intervention. “Should an organization that’s good at what it does — labor mediation — apply itself to a national-resources dispute?” asks Richard Duncan, a lawyer who represented environmental groups. The FMCS “wasted incredible time and money and effort.”

Mr. Wagner says he’s confident the process worked. “We Americans have a tendency to look at things in black and white, win or lose,” he says. “Mediators don’t take this position. If you begin on the road to resolution, the journey is important.”

Recently, he was called to referee among American Indian tribes fighting over $275 million in annual federal funds for reservation roads. He had to grapple with obscure facts and formulas — such as how much it costs to carve roads into the ice of the Alaska tundra. (The answer: about $100,000 a mile.) Just setting ground rules for the talks took four months.

Mediating among 13 federal government representatives and 29 tribal negotiators, he says he’d just let them shout it out — for a while. “Usually, people start to shout when they get very frustrated,” Mr. Wagner says. “You judge how long it goes, then you shock them into reality by telling them to wrap it up in 30 words or less.”

The techniques don’t always work. Mr. Wagner remembers a few years back trying to mediate in his own home, in a discussion about his two teen sons’ curfews. He talked about accommodating his interest (safety) and theirs (late-night access to the family car). “‘Dad,'” Mr. Wagner recalls one of them saying. “‘Don’t use this.'”

FMCS continues to grow and promote this non-labor mediation work.

The post The Wall Street Journal Article first appeared on Friends of FMCS History Foundation.

Panama and FMCS

Rich Giacolone — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 15:32:03 +0000

FMCS has played a key role in Panama. Specifically for the Panama Canal Labor Relations System. FMCS provided services to the U.S. Panama Canal Commission out of the Southern District. The FMCS role was multifaceted including mediation of collective bargaining agreements and midterm issues under the Federal Labor Relations Statute, and even some commercial mediation with the PCC/Army Corps of Engineers and its construction contractors. In addition, FMCS conducted numerous training programs for employees, union representatives, and management officials at the canal all focusing on the seamless transition of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama which transpired on December 31st, 1999. Every employee of the canal without exception was required to attend this Interest Based Problem Solving initiative to prepare for the transfer of the canal.

In addition to our traditional role offering services to Canal we were asked to help with the transition of the Labor Relations System from U.S. law to Panamanian law. This request led to the multi-year USAID funded effort to help develop the Labor Relations Section of the Organic Law and the Labor Relations Regulations for the Canal. This effort also involved FMCS training a cadre of Mediators and Arbitrators many of whom became Labor Board Members of the Panama Canal Authority. Over 30 FMCS personnel were involved in this project which did lead to the successful transfer of the Canal and to this date no work stoppages and a post USA history of labor peace.

THE PANAMA MEDIATOR CLASS OF 1999 with Commissioners Giacolone and Weinberg

Mediators involved in this project included David Thaler, Gary Hattal, Jane Lorber, Michael Wolf, David Weinberg, Pete Swanson, Inez Delgado, Sergio Delgado, Lou Manchise, Andrea Strimling, Beth Schindler, Denise McKenny, Lonnie Stokes, Doug Hammond, Richard Giacolone and Richard Barnes.

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