Now to start out I need to be clear, before the other day, I had never heard of The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
(FMCS), and I will wager that none of you did either.
From the Federal Register:
“The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, created in 1947, is an independent agency whose mission is to preserve and promote labor-management peace and cooperation. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with two regional offices and more than 70 field offices, the agency provides mediation and conflict resolution services to industry, government agencies and communities.
The Agency helps build better relationships through joint problem-solving and constructive responses to inevitable conflict. In turn, this improves the ability of organizations to create value for customers, shareholders and employees alike, and substantially benefits the national economy. The Agency concentrates its efforts on assisting employers and employees in coping with the demands of a rapidly changing workplace.”
So much for what FMCS was designed to do.
From Luke Rosiak at The Daily Wire, 3/19/25:
“The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be ‘in the shower’ when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.
FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.
“FMCS seemed, quite clearly, to exist for the benefit of those on its payroll, and not much else. One employee told me: ‘Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?’”
President Trump just shut it down. Who will miss the FMCS? Probably only its employees!
3/21/25