Welcome to the GAO Union website: About this site

This interactive website is independent of and not affliated with the official GAO Union, i.e., the GAO Employees Organization (GEO), IFPTE local 1921, or its website (URL: http://www.gaoanalysts.org).  This site was founded by a group of GAO analysts–led by Robert Kershaw (shown in photo)–to help facilitate an open process for the formation of the GAO Union governing structure after the vote in favor of establishing a union at GAO on Wednesday, September 19, 2007, and its purpose is

• to Promote Understanding of Key Issues & Challenges Facing GAO as an agency as well as its Analysts Union, IFPTE Local 1921.

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Goals, Background, & History of the http://gaounion.org website 

The goal of the site is to provide the best content possible, with interactive features, to promote understanding and consideration of issues facing GAO and the GAO Analyst community and encourage the development of a strong, vibrant, & highly participative GAO Analyst Union built upon the principles of representative democracy.

This interactive website–with blogging & search capabilities–was founded by a group of GAO analysts to help facilitate an open process for the formation of the GAO Union governing structure after the vote in favor of establishing a union at GAO on Wednesday, September 19, 2007.  However, after the union election, a vocal faction of the Union’s Interim Council wanted the official union site to remain http://www.GAOAnalysts.org/ which was paid for and controlled by IFPTE, the parent GAO union, so since that time this http://gaounion.org website has been independently financed and maintained by a group of analysts led by Robert Kershaw to afford GAO and its analysts an alternative site for finding useful information on topics related to the challenges and issues facing GAO and its union. 

Since the September 2007 GAO election to unionize, the founders of this website have also focused on developing and updating this site with news and links of current and historical interest to GAO staff that was never envisioned to be included on the IFPTE’s site, www.GAOAnalysts.org. In June 2008, the GAO Union Interim Council’s Communications Committee wanted to merge this website with the IFPTE site, but informed GAOUnion.org that the merged site would remain under control of the international union, IFPTE, and would not include a capability for readers to post comments or blog, an important feature of this site. Therefore, while we allowed the Communications Committee to merge any content they wished for this site, we decided to continue maintaining this separate site on a public server.  Our goal was to promote a diversity of information sources for GAO analysts and to allow readers to post their comments and blog if they so chose, thus supporting deliberative democracy across GAO.

Interestingly, the site was surprised the following message sent to all members of the GAO bargaining unit–about 1800 Band I and II Analysts–on April 12, 2010:

Union Statement about the GAO Union Website (http://www.gaoanalysts.org/) & Official GAO Union Communications (Special Union News 4/12/2010)

The official Website of the GAO Union, at http://www.gaoanalysts.org/, is the only Website where you can get trustworthy, official communications and information about the GAO Union, IFPTE Local 1921.  The content on http://www.gaoanalysts.org/ is created, checked, and verified by elected Union representatives and their officially designated volunteers to be:

• factual
• accurate
• non-partisan
• a vehicle for feedback to your Union representatives
• a resource for representation
• an archive of vital Union documents and agreements with management

If you have any questions, please contact us at gaoanalysts@ifpte.org. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Regrettably, the founders of this website–http://www.gaounion.org–found the above message from the OFFICIAL GAO Employees Organization (GEO), IFPTE Local 1921 to be an uncharitable, implied criticism of our site. For the record, this site has never received a single complaint for being inaccurate or partisan, and while the site does occasionally publish Op-Eds, in all other respects the founders of this site attempt to assure that it is always

# factual
# accurate
# non-partisan
# a vehicle for feedback to your Union representatives
# a resource for representation
# an archive of vital Union documents and agreements with management.

Finally, this site also attempts to be–and usually is when compared with the http://www.gaoanalysts.org/ site, more comprehensive and timely in posting information of interest to readers interested in GAO as well as its Union.

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How this site is structured

On the very top of the site in the black area are the Skip to Content, Home, & Login features. If you want to post comments to this site, you will need to register an email address and a name (or nom de plume). Comments will be reviewed ASAP for posting on this website. Uncharitable or offensive comments will not be posted. Proceeding from the top of the website, first there is a row of several key links: 

Skip to Content   |   Home   |  Logout   |   Welcome: To post login & register a username & email address.   |  About   |  Purpose  |  Why  

Proceeding down, you will next see the title & summary purpose of the site. gaounion.org An Independent Website to Promote Understanding & Consideration of Issues Facing GAO & its Union, Local 1921  Next down, in the light blue row, there are pull down menus for quick retrieval of five pages with key content and links. There are also links to two RSS feeds About site  Purpose  Why unionize?  GAOAnalysts/IFPTE  Key Links  Entries RSS  Comments RSS

Next in the white area on the left are the posts in reverse chronological order, showing the Month and Day of the Post, its source, and the categories in which the post is filed. This site has 10 posts per page.DD Latest News Post Mmm Posted by: GAOUnionAdmin in: Category

At the bottom of the page are links to take you to the previous or next page. 

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