JFR notes 2/13/2019 Town Hall (11:00)

1. Welcome
• TY for coming [acknowledge other Board members in attendance]
• One of the things the Agency can do better is internal communications
(with employees).
• This is true of communication at all levels of the Agency and on many
different topics (including confusing weather/closing-related messages),
but there is specific information particularized to the Board-side work we
do that we need to do a better job of getting to you
• I think back to my days as a junior attorney, sitting and working away in my
office and things would get announced or a new lateral associate or partner
would appear, and I’d think –
o Gee, if I had known that, I would have or could have done X
o Or, if I had known that, it would have helped me see the larger
picture of what was going on
o Or, if I had known that, I would have felt like you valued me enough
to tell me what was going on.
• The reality is in the pace of things we sometimes get moving and forget to
make sure some of the most important parts of the process (our people)
are included in the communication.
• I am committed to doing better on this.
• So, today we’re hoping to provide you some useful updates and
information about Board-side specific matters. You can decide whether it’s
useful, but we’ll provide it to you anyway.
2. Introduction of new Board-Side Staff
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Chief of Staff – Christine
Solicitor – Fred
Executive Secretary – Roxanne
CFO – Isabel McConnell
OCPA – Cynthia Witkin
Introduce new legal administrative specialists
o Jo Ann; Monica Bowen (Emanuel), Christina Ford (McFerran)
• [Beth]
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 JFR notes 2/13/2019 Town Hall (11:00)

3. Update on Hiring (Christine)
• Despite budgetary restrictions and pressures from the GC-side that the
Board-side “share the pain” of several years of a flat budget (which means a
budget cut in real terms), we have been able to keep staffing roughly
unchanged – and been able to back-fill departures (which hasn’t always
been the case on the GC-side)
• So, in addition to the positions just mentioned being filled, we’ve posted to
fill some additional vacancies
o an assistant solicitor to replace Susan Leverone
o 2 vacancies in the R-unit
• For each Board member’s staff:
o We filled the vacant independent 15s internally, through
promotional opportunities
o Now we’re hiring GS 13 and 14 attorneys on the Chairman’s and
Member McFerran’s staff to maintain staffs of up to 10 attorneys

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 JFR notes 2/13/2019 Town Hall (11:00)

4. Update on Strategic Plan
• One prime example of where we have not been stellar in our
communications with you was our announcement of our strategic plan.
• We worked hard to finalize it; worked hard on an external press release,
and then HR sent it out to the deputies and others and said to distribute –
with no cover message or explanation.
• Most of you probably read about it in the press. Some of you may still not
have heard about it or even if you have, you may not know what it is
• I’ve gotten some questions about the plan.
• Obviously, in a better communication process, we would have made sure
you had the plan with an explanation before (or at least at the same time)
we released it publicly.
• The Strategic Plan is an externally-published statement of the Agency’s
long-term goals, objectives, initiatives and strategies and includes measures
for managing and assessing the Board’s overall performance. All federal
agencies are required to issue Strategic Plans and make them publicly
available.
• The Strategic Plan that we issued in January was not substantially changed
from the prior strategic plan except in creating certain goals for reducing
the time it takes to process cases – at all levels.
• So, we thought it might be useful for Beth Tursell (who in her Operations
role and her then-acting CFO role) was part of the creation of the revisions
to this strategic plan.
• She’ll give an overview of the overall time reduction initiative, and then talk
specifically about what they’re doing on the GC side – because that’s
important that you know what’s going on there
• Then, we’ll talk about the Board-side aspects of the plan
[Beth]
• Board-side components of the Strategic Plan
o In consultation with GC Robb, the Board thought that it could
reasonably set a goal of 5% per year reductions in case processing
time –
o The Board has been very focused on case processing times, and we
felt that we could achieve the goals with continued focus on case
processing
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 JFR notes 2/13/2019 Town Hall (11:00)

o Second, the Board did not change any of the SES expectations or any
other employee performance measures.
o As I said, we believe the reduction goals can be met with our focus
on case processing.
• Any questions? This brings me to another topic – case processing.
[We need to be prepared if they ask about specifics]
5. Update on Case Processing
• As was announced in September, most of the Board’s focus on case
processing has been part of ES 18-3 regarding Expediting Board Case
Handling
• This ES memo contains many of the same goals and targets that have been
in prior ES memos back to the 50’s and 60’s.
• But, as I’ve discussed before, everything I’ve read about case processing
(Gary’s binder) is that where prior attempts have failed, it wasn’t because
of staff delays or other processing concerns, and in fairness there are many
reasons case processing falls behind
• it all came down to whether the Board members themselves were
committed to the timely processing of cases – whether that was their
primary focus.
• This Board has committed itself to a focus on processing cases – and I think
you all have seen that.
• The Board reviews the case processing spreadsheet (most of you probably
have seen) and we are holding ourselves accountable for meeting the
deadlines.
• And, we also tried to build in some scheduling certainty so staffs and staff
attorneys can try to schedule when a draft is expected and when revisions
are due.
• I believe – and I think the other Board members believe that it is the right
thing to do in our efforts to accomplish the purposes of the Act.
• Parties waiting 4, 5, 6 or more years for resolution of their case is justice
denied.
• [Chairman Bobby Scott – increased remedies]
• The Board committed to reviewing ES 18-3 after 6 months to see how
things are going – is it working? are we killing ourselves? Have these
efforts impacted our staff and if so, how is the staff managing?
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 JFR notes 2/13/2019 Town Hall (11:00)

• As part of that process, we hope to get your input on how you think the
process is going, and suggestions for how ES18-3 may be improved, and
case-processing generally.
• I’ve also asked Roxanne to work on a process to gather input on other ways
we can streamline case processing more generally – from start to finish.
And we’ll share more about that with you as that plan is developed.
• As I mentioned in my memo to everyone in September, ES 18-3 was not
designed to change anything about how you do your job and certainly not
put any additional pressure on you. It also was not meant to chose speed
at the expense of excellence. We’ll be interested in your feedback on the
process.
• Any questions?
6. Update on Rulemaking
• Quick update on rulemaking, which is something the Board majority is
interested in doing more of.
• With regard to the joint employer NPRM – the (reply) comment period
closed Monday at midnight; we received close to 29,000 comments. We’re
leveraging the Federal Register platform for the public posting of all of
these comments to facilitate the review. We already know there are many
duplicates and a number that are not substantive, but ESO is estimating
between 500 and 2,000 substantive comments. Obviously, we will want to
go through all of the comments carefully.
• Our goal is to minimize the impact on case processing and your ongoing
work and we’re looking into ways to have the initial review of these
comments done without having to pull Board attorneys away from their
case processing work, so the ES Office has posted a FWAP notice and we’ll
also use contract support as needed.
• Staff reps for each member assigned to the joint employer rulemaking will
approve the template that will be used by the reviewers to categorize and
catalogue the comment information. Ultimately, each Member’s staff will
get a summary of the comments received, that they can rely on to brief
their Member.
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 JFR notes 2/13/2019 Town Hall (11:00)

• We also have Election Rules that we’ve announced that at first will focus on
blocking charges and voluntary recognition.
• We also have some other rulemaking initiatives, including one dealing with
access to property and related issues. That is something we’d include in
our regulatory agenda filing, which usually occurs in March.
• Any questions?
• Any general questions anyone has?
Thank you for coming. We hope this was informative. And, we’ll hope to do
these Board-side meeting more regularly as part of our effort at better
communications.
Thanks.

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