Note: This request is a collaboration with Forest Gregg, who maintains a free, open-source database of data relevant to the labor movement.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) is an independent federal agency that helps to mediate labor-management disputes. As part of those efforts, it requires employers entering collective bargaining negotiations to submit an “F-7 notice,” providing information about the upcoming bargaining.
Although FMCS publishes spreadsheets containing some data from those submissions, its internal database includes helpful additional details (such as the database’s unique identifiers associated with each employer and union), as evidenced by the schema provided to the Data Liberation Project in response to FOIA-2023-00009.
Our FOIA request 📄 to FMCS seeks those full details. Specifically, it seeks all entries in the FMCS case management database’s pt_fmcscase table, with the exception of FOIA-exempt columns, where the case originates with a FMCS F-7 notice as indicated in the pt_f7noticesubmissionformat or pt_f7noticesubmissionformatname columns (or better means as determined by FMCS staff), plus related database-lookup tables.