Mission Statement

The Office of Labor Relations fosters high-performing labor-management relationships through the use of collaborative and interest-based methods that demonstrate the possibilities of effective labor-management partnership and confirm the value of the County's workforce.

Budget Overview

The total recommended FY26 Operating Budget for the Office of Labor Relations is $2,523,120, an increase of $309,281 or 13.97 percent from the FY25 Approved Budget of $2,213,839. Personnel Costs comprise 85.34 percent of the budget for 13 full-time position(s) and no part-time position(s), and a total of 13.00 FTEs. Total FTEs may include seasonal or temporary positions and may also reflect workforce charged to or from other departments or funds. Operating Expenses account for the remaining 14.66 percent of the FY26 budget.

County Priority Outcomes

While this program area supports all eight of the County Result Areas, the following is emphasized:

• Effective, Sustainable Government

Program Performance Measures

Performance measures for this department are included below (where applicable). The FY25 estimates reflect funding based on the FY25 approved budget. The FY26 and FY27 figures are performance targets based on the FY26 recommended budget and funding for comparable service levels in FY27.

Innovations and Productivity Improvements

• Implemented centralization plan reassigning countywide labor and employee relations functions to the Office of Labor Relations.
• Negotiated a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the Fraternal Order of Police and a new Direct Bargaining Agreement (DBA) with the Montgomery County Volunteer Fire-Rescue Association.

• Modified the County's Collective Bargaining Issues Development and Strategy Process for Term Bargaining in order to streamline and expedite the process, and re-established a Collective Bargaining Policy Committee to set County priorities ahead of term bargaining.

• Launched a new OLR intranet site to provide resources to departments.
• Created and implemented multiple Standard Operating Procedures for ensuring that labor and employee relations issues are addressed timely and consistently, and developed training content on multiple labor and employee relations subjects that will ultimately become a comprehensive training library to guide and support departments.
• Continued countywide Labor Management Relations Committee (LMRC) subcommittees on health and safety topics; department-level LMRCs in nearly every department in the County; and quarterly training for all LMRC members.
• Continued to improve grievance processing through use of a new grievance tracker as well as software that allows OLR to track the status of all grievances in real time.

Program Descriptions

  Labor Relations

The Office of Labor Relations (OLR) administers the County's labor and employee relations programs. These include conducting collective bargaining with the three County unions and volunteer Firefighters; administering and ensuring compliance with collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and other labor-management agreements and personnel regulations; managing collaborative labor-management programs and joint initiatives,...