Posted on December 16, 2025 by AdminUN

EEOC ORDERS NO CONTACT (AND MORE) AFTER SEXUAL HARASSMENT

An HHS employee, Ileana, alleged that she was sexually harassed by the Agency’s Deputy Director (DD), who touched her leg, rubbed her shoulders, stared at her chest, looked down her blouse, and repeatedly asked her out to lunch and dinner. She maintained that she rebuffed DD’s advances and told him to stop his behavior, but he did not do so. She further alleged that when she rebuffed his advances, DD punished her by assigning her extra duties, refusing her requests for training, assigning her duties outside her position description. Finally, she alleged that DD would often call Complainant into his office to “vent” which often resulted in DD throwing pencils and pens across the room. What did EEOC do about it once it upheld her charges? It imposed an order that included five kinds of remedies. First, … Continue reading →

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Posted on December 15, 2025 by AdminUN

BEING A RESPONSIBLE UNION MEMBER

There is more to it than paying dues and voting in the union election. While it would be great if more folks volunteered to serve as officers or stewards or even to recruit  new members, at a minimum you should know your rights within the union as a member.  These are in addition to any rights in the collective bargaining Agreement with the agency.  The U.S. Dep’t. of Labor posts a great deal of information about union member rights.  Below are just a few of the questions they answer on their website.

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Posted on December 9, 2025 by AdminUN

IRS-NTEU MEMBERS CELEBRATE NEGOTIATED MONETARY AWARDS

Anytime an agency distributes tens of millions for cash awards to its best performing employees is a great time for a celebration. This includes not only one-time cash awards for high performance, but also quality step increases (QSI’s) for the best of the best.  There are also more cash awards for those bilingual employees who voluntarily use their multi-language skills to deal with taxpayers who do not speak English well-enough to work through the arcane terms of tax law.  But maybe the best part of this award process is that the system was established through negotiations after NTEU demanded that bonus money be handed out more objectively. That was about three decades ago when NTEU… Continue reading →

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Posted on December 4, 2025 by AdminUN

MSPB WATERS DOWN THE KALKINES RIGHT

While the Commander-in-Chief is busy redecorating the oval office in a style that can only be described as neo-bordello, his bouncers at the MSPB have been chipping away at the Constitutional rights of federal employees. For longer than most of our readers have been alive the Supreme Court has held that a public employee “…cannot be discharged simply because he invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to respond.”  This is called the Kalkines right after the name of the case it came from. The court spelled out a two-part test that public employees only “subject themselves to dismissal if they refuse to account for their performance of their public trust, after proper proceedings, which do not involve an attempt to coerce them to relinquish their constitutional rights.”   Nonetheless, the MSPB Trumpettes recently added a third element when they upheld the termination of an IRS supervisor (Michelle Shows) who refused to answer a question when being grilled by her supervisor because…   Continue reading →

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Posted on December 4, 2025 by AdminUN

WHAT THE $%#& AFGE?

The D.C Court of Appeals recently issued a decision of  minor significance to all us union advocates.  But it contained “alleged” details about a union leader’s behavior that are so outrageous that it causes me to wonder who is in charge at AFGE. Here is what the federal court wrote to describe what a union member said about her local. Continue reading →

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Posted on October 22, 2025 by AdminUN

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY PROTECTIONS FOR FEDS – RECENT LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS

DOJ is busy trying to legally substantiate paying Trump $230 million for enduring the same process every other suspected and/or indicted citizen endures-but without being paid. But it somehow found a few minutes to address the right of federal employees to situational telework to practice their religion. Click here for a legal memo it issued confirming that feds do have the statutory right to this. It should help when some supervisor reacts from the gut and denies some union member’s request.

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Posted on October 20, 2025 by AdminUN

WHY HAVE UNIONS NOT TRIED THIS?

A budget shutdown puts a lot of pain on federal employees.  No one gets a check during the shutdown and some even must continue to go to work, incurring commuting costs and denying them a chance to pick up some temp work to cover basic costs. Because the problem largely comes from the Anti-Deficiency Act, unions should be doing everything they can to gut the provisions of that law permitting this situation. For example, Continue reading →

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Posted on October 20, 2025 by AdminUN

JOB REASSIGNMENTS CAN BE ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION

Back in 2024 the Supreme Court held that some job reassignments have enough of an adverse impact on employees that the employee can file a discrimination claim.  Since then, the courts have been trying to flesh out just which reassignments are and are not protected by anti-discrimination laws. The U.S Fourth Circuit Court  of Appeals is the latest court to chime in on this issue. The folks at the Ogletree Deakins law firm put together an advice memo for their clients that we thought you also might find helpful. Click here to access.   The case concerned a federal employee at the Social Security Administration and the issue of whether employee’s reassignment could be considered adverse even if it did not result in a “significant” change in her employment status. The loss of supervisory authority and duties, as well as the perceived demotion, were sufficient to potentially meet this standard.

Posted in EEO/Discrimination, Reassignments | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on October 8, 2025 by AdminUN

MENOPAUSAL DISCRIMINATION IS LEGAL, BUT…   

Virtually all the case law holds that discrimination against employees because they are in their menopausal period of life is not illegal.  (Yes, we know. That sounds insane given the hard connection between it and age as well as gender. But stay with us.) It is normally ILLEGAL to discriminate based on  someone suffering the effects of menopause. This becomes even more significant when you realize, as one association notes, statistics  “show that nearly 1 in 4 menopausal employees suffer from severe menopause-related symptoms that impact their ability to work. “ Continue reading →

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Posted on October 8, 2025 by AdminUN

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR UNION FREE SPEECH RIGHTS

Thankfully, the instances of union members being blackballed, beaten or even murdered for opposing the union’s leadership or its policies are few and very far in between today.  But that does not mean that we have seen the last of autocratic or despotic union leaders who do need to be criticized and called out.  And the primary way to do that is for members to vigorously exercise the special statutory rights union members have to free speech about union affairs. This post highlights the most important things to know about that right.  Continue reading →

Posted in Union Member Rights, Union Rights | Tagged | Leave a comment