FLRA Chairman Appoints Foreign Service Impasse Disputes Panel
Patrick Pizzella, Acting Chairman of the FLRA, in his capacity as Acting Chairperson of the Foreign Service Labor Relations Board, announces the following appointments to the Foreign Service Impasse Disputes Panel (Foreign Service Panel): Mark Anthony Carter, of West Virginia, will serve as the Chair and Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) Member, and Andrew R. Arthur, of Maryland, will serve as the public Member. The Foreign Service Panel Chair and Members serve on a part-time basis, as impasse disputes involving the Foreign Service arise.
Mr. Carter’s appointment is effective July 28, 2017, for a term ending on January 10, 2022. And Mr. Arthur’s appointment is effective July 28, 2017, for a term ending on July 28, 2020. They join the three current Members of the Foreign Service Panel: Shawn Hooper, who serves as the Department of Labor Member; John C. Sullivan who serves as a Foreign Service Member; and William Hansen, who serves as the other Foreign Service Member. All three of the current Members’ terms expire on March 7, 2018.
Mr. Carter’s biography is included above in the article about the new FSIP members. Andrew R. Arthur is currently a Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization, which is the nation’s only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States. He has previously served in the legislative branch as Staff Director, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, National Security Subcommittee from 2015 to 2016, and as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary from 2001 to 2006. In addition, Mr. Arthur served previously in the executive branch as an Immigration Judge at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), Immigration Court in York, Pennsylvania, from 2006 to 2015, and in various supervisory and nonsupervisory roles within DOJ’s former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and EOIR from 1992 to 2001. He received his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School in 1992 and his B.A. from The University of Virginia in 1988. Mr. Arthur resides in Towson, Maryland.
The Foreign Service Panel was created by the Foreign Service Act of 1980 (22 U.S.C. §§ 4110-4118) to assist in resolving impasses arising in the course of collective bargaining under the Act over conditions of employment affecting Foreign Service personnel working for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, USAID, and the Departments of State, Agriculture, and Commerce. The Act provides that the FLRA Chairman – who also serves as the Chairperson of the Foreign Service Relations Board – to appoint the five-member Foreign Service Panel members, and requires that it be composed of two members of the Foreign Service (who are not management officials, confidential employees, or labor organization officials); one member of the FSIP; one individual employed by the U.S. Department of Labor; and one public member who does not hold any other office or position in the government.