U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

The Labor Agreement Information Retrieval System (LAIRS) has been used as both a repository of federal labor relations information as well as a database that manages information related to the establishment of individual bargaining units and their related Bargaining Unit Status (BUS) codes. BUS codes are primarily used to identify employees assigned to positions for which a labor organization has been granted exclusive recognition to represent them.

In September 2007, LAIRS was redesigned to take advantage of the many advances made in Internet technology, database search engines and user interface facilities. LAIRS has been updated to allow key word/term searches on such things as bargaining unit profiles, BUS code information and collective bargaining agreements. We have also added the Negotiability Determinations by the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Union Recognition in the Federal Government publications to LAIRS as searchable databases. Both of these applications include reports which can be modified by the user.

The information in this document guides the user through each of the applications within LAIRS, provides instructions for navigating and completing the screens, and also provides useful tips.

Our goal is to continuously improve this site in both the quality of the information provided and the utility of the search and reporting capabilities. The Contact page is your gateway to provide us with your comments and suggestions on the performance of LAIRS.

Various executive orders, regulations and other sites are referenced in LAIRS. On the LINKS page, you are able to connect directly to those documents or websites for additional information. We have also included a link to facilitate downloading the most recent version of Adobe Reader which is necessary to fully optimize the search function in the Collective Bargaining Agreement section. This link also may be found at the bottom of each LAIRS page.

Searching Negotiability Determinations

The Search Negotiability Determinations page provides a query form that will allow you to search the Negotiability Determinations by

• certain words or phrases,
• union,
• case citation,
• category or sub-category*,
• the determination made by the Federal Labor Relations Authority, or
• any combination of the above.

*Note that the Sub-category field only populates after a Category has been selected.

When typing a word or phrase in the Keyword or Phrase field, do not use quotation marks. Any consecutive words are considered a phrase and the search will only return results that include the phrase as you have entered it.  At this time, only a single word or phrase may be searched. Future enhancements will include the ability to search on multiple words and/or phrases.

When entering information in the Union box, use the Union’s acronym such as AFGE for the American Federation of Government Employees or NTEU for the National Treasury Employees Union. A complete listing of Union acronyms may be found at Commonly Used Abbreviations for Federal Unions document 

Cases will be listed chronologically within each category and sub-category beginning with the most recent decision.

Negotiability Determinations Reports

The Reports section replaces the publication, Negotiability Determinations of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, by providing the entire database in a report format. Users may select a category or only a particular sub-category when requesting a report.

Searching for Bargaining Unit Information

The Bargaining Unit search page allows the user to identify a single bargaining unit or group of bargaining units. You may search by Agency, Union(and/or Local number), or Activity to which the employees are assigned, and the OLMR Number. The OLMR number is the unit BUS code with the two-digit agency identifier appended to the front (e.g., 080110 where 08 is the agency identifier and 0110 is the BUS code). Selecting by OLMR code will always return a single unit.  Any other variable, selected alone, may return multiple units.

If only the BUS code is known, it may be entered into the Keyword or Phrase field and the search will return all units with that BUS code. Units may further be selected by the state in which they are located or, in the case of foreign locations, the country.

Viewing Search Results

Search results are presented in a table sorted by Agency. The table includes links to the Union profile, CBA profile and the relevant CBA if a copy has been submitted to OPM. The selected CBA will open in Adobe Viewer.

Bargaining Unit Reports

Bargaining unit reports appear in table format. They may be printed using your browser settings. The Active BUS code report presents all active units in alphabetical order sorting on the two character CPDF Agency code. The Deactivated BUS code report will list those units that have consolidated into other units or have been deactivated. This information is provided for historical purposes.

Reports should be printed with a Landscape orientation.

Searching Agreements

LAIRS also is a repository of federal sector collective bargaining agreements (CBA or agreement). A search engine has been provided to allow users the ability to search CBAs on certain topics, select CBAs negotiated by a particular agency and/or labor organization, or retrieve the CBA for a certain bargaining unit. It is highly recommended that search results be viewed using the most recent version of Adobe Reader to achieve maximum results. A link to Adobe Reader may be found at the bottom of each page.

The Search by CBA Profile looks for an agreement associated with a particular organization using the CBA profile that has been developed for each bargaining agreement. The CBA profiles include the name of the Agency and Union, OLMR Number, name of activity where the CBA was negotiated and other identifying information. The more information the user can provide, the more narrow the search results. Remember the search is limited to the information contained in the bargaining agreement profile.

In the event the user may not have a great deal of specific information, a word search can be used. You may, for example, want to look for CBAs associated with an arsenal but may not know the union, name of the parent agency or exact location of the facility. Entering the word “arsenal” in the Keyword or Phrase block (without the quotation marks) will return any agreement with the term “arsenal” in its profile. The search result will allow you to view the profile of the CBA, the bargaining unit that is party to the CBA, as well as the CBA itself.

The CBAs may also be searched by Agency, Union, OLMR number and by Union Local/Council number. 

Viewing Search Results

Search results may be viewed two ways. The first is in Adobe Viewer as a .pdf file. Select the title of the agreement and the document will open. These files may be copied but cannot be edited in LAIRS. A link has been provided on the LINKS page to download Adobe Reader which will provide the user the ability to perform a robust search of the document. We highly recommend that searches be performed using the latest version of Adobe Reader to take full advantage of the system’s capabilities.

The second option is to view the CBAs in HTML where each instance of the search term will be highlighted on the screen. This is accomplished by clicking on the globe symbol to the right of the line indicating the Document size. Please note – many documents have pages with a great deal of white space above and below the text. If your screen appears blank after making this selection, scroll down until you see the text.

These searches will generate tables that identify the agency and union, effective and expiration dates of the CBA and a link to the document. The CBA(s) listed will be identified as either the current agreement or a historical agreement (one that has expired or is superseded by a current agreement).

Also note that search results are opened in a new window, therefore the window should be closed when you have finished viewing the results.

You may display the results of your search in HTML, or in ASCII. The same information is provided regardless of the format, however, links to the CBA document are only provided when displayed in the HTML format.

If a search returns no record (i.e., “no row”), retry your search using other variables. If your search still is unsuccessful, it is most likely the parties have not submitted a copy of their CBA for inclusion in LAIRS or have not negotiated their first agreement. We encourage the parties to an agreement to submit a copy for inclusion in LAIRS. OPM Form 913-B is used for this purpose.

Printing Documents

Documents may be printed using the settings provided in the application used to view the document.

A series of predefined reports are available to users including listings that are static and not subject to modification by the user as well as reports for which the user may define a number of selection parameters. Selecting the Listing of All Recognition Units will return a complete listing of the approximately 2300 bargaining units recorded in LAIRS. Users are cautioned that this report takes considerable time to generate due to its size.

All reports that allow the user to enter selection criteria provide drop down listings of the variables from which to select. Note that for the selection by Agency and Union, both fields must include an entry. Entering only one variable will cause the report function to fail.

For all reports, users may define the output of the result. In addition to determining the font size, users may select the HTML or ASCII format for display on the screen. Two layout formats are available, Tabular and Form. Tabular displays each record as a single row in a table while Form creates a multi-row display for each record similar in appearance to an index card.

When printing from LAIRS, your web browser settings will determine the appearance of the output.