Timeline 1990-2013

FMCS celebrates its 50th anniversary and receives Vice President’s Hammer Award for “Progress in Reinventing Government.”
FMCS arbitration rules and policies are revised for the first time since 1979.

C. Richard Barnes, a career mediator, is appointed by President Clinton as FMCS’s fourteenth director and introduces a long-range vision designed to position the agency as a global disseminator of labor relations and conflict management best practices.

Peter J. Hurtgen, former Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, is appointed by President Bush as FMCS’s fifteenth director and successfully mediates a number of national labor conflicts, including the 10-day West Coast Ports closing in 2002 that cost the national economy an estimated $1 billion a day.

Director Hurtgen mediates an end to the 141-day Southern California grocery strike, the longest in the industry’s history. To increase mediator expertise on strategic industries and bargaining issues, the agency launches a mediator training initiative and increases outreach to labor and management.