Posted on April 20, 2021 by AdminUN

EVEN DISCLOSURE BY MISTAKE OF MED INFO IS ILLEGAL AND COMPENSABLE

Instead of sending an email notifying his supervisor that an employee had been taken to the hospital, a CBP manager sent all 118 co-workers at an Arizona station naming an employee and disclosing that he “had been transported to a medical center after experiencing rapid heartbeat and tightness in his chest and left hand.”  The employee filed an EEOC complaint alleging that his private medical information had been illegally disclosed and asking for money damages. Continue reading →

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Posted on April 20, 2021 by AdminUN

MSPB EXPANDS ACCUSED EMPLOYEE’S RIGHT TO INFORMATION

A Homeland Security Agent was fired for falsifying an official form.  When he tried to defend himself by pointing out how supervisory employees who committed the same offense were not fired, DHS management and the MSPB Judge would not let him see that evidence.  The terminated employee appealed, and got not only the information but another chance to prove his defense. Continue reading →

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Posted on March 24, 2021 by AdminUN

COVID AND WORKERS’ COMP CLAIMS

Thanks to one of our readers who pointed out that Federal employees can potentially qualify for Workers Compensation based on acquiring COVID.  Check out this web site for details.

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Posted on March 22, 2021 by AdminUN

INSIDE THE MIND OF JAMES ABBOTT: MUDDLED OR MALICIOUS

As time goes on it becomes clearer and clearer that it is only on a rare day that James Abbott can be called something as flattering as merely malicious.  Most of the time his contempt for unions and a government run by laws rather than grudge-lugging political appointees are his most prominent feature. We were reminded of that in NLRB and NLRBU, 72 FLRA 80 (2021), a February decision where he issued a dissenting opinion criticizing even his ultra conservative FLRA colleague, Colleen Kiko Duffy. So absurd was Abbott’s view of how the law should operate that it got us wondering whether he is vying for election as Grand Dragon of some local QAnon lodge and that we can soon expect an opinion from him blaming Bill Gates for the Bill of Rights and Hillary for democracy.  In any event, this NLRBU case was about when the filing of a ULP bars a union from also filing a grievance in the future on similar facts and vice versa. Here are the facts in Jimmy’s Abbs own dissenting words. Continue reading →

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Posted on March 22, 2021 by AdminUN

NEGOTIATING 7106(b)(1) GRADES

We are going to open with the bad news.  FLRA has used the statutory provision of 7103(a)(14)(B) that excludes from the concept of conditions of employment anything “relating to the classification of any position” to pretty much gut the right to negotiate over grades. When AFGE proposed, “There will be six GS-12 Longshore Workers Compensation Claims Examiner Positions (GS-991-12) in the Boston District Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs” FLRA wrote that … Continue reading →

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Posted on March 14, 2021 by AdminUN

UNION REP TEST #12 (Illegal Bypass and Direct Dealing)

One of the harder things for managers to understand is a union’s “exclusive recognition” rights.  They just do not mean that the union is the only or exclusive organization the agency can deal with to negotiate formal agreements. They also prohibit a lot of other kinds of communications where the manager bypasses the union to deal directly with the employees, which would be a violation of 5 USC 7116(a)((1) and (5). Test your own understanding with these True-False questions.  The answers are at the end of the post. Continue reading →

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Posted on March 14, 2021 by AdminUN

NEGOTIATING THE 7106(b)(1) “NUMBERS” OF EMPLOYEES     

Biden’s Order requires agencies to negotiate over the “numbers…of employees or positions assigned to any organizational subdivisions, work project or tour of duty.” About the only way to make a numbers proposal non-negotiable is to focus on the total number of employees the agency must employee rather than the number assigned to a component, e.g., tour of duty, work project, etc. Office of Surface Mining, 53 FLRA 427 (1997).  Indeed, it does not matter whether the union demands the agency increase, decrease or maintain the current number of employees; the proposal would still be negotiable. FAA, 60 FLRA 159 (2004)  Consequently, unions can now demand that agencies fill vacant positions, assign two people certain jobs or tasks, or spell out the staffing for a tour of duty, which the FLRA has defined as  the hours of a day (a daily tour of duty) and the days of an administrative workweek (a weekly tour of duty) that constitute an employee’s regularly scheduled administrative workweek. NAGE, Local R5-184, 52 FLRA 1024 (1997).

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Posted on March 7, 2021 by AdminUN

8 YEARS OF BACK PAY & CHOICE OF WORK LOCATION

When a few managers at the Greenville North Carolina TSA facility decided to make life miserable for an employee merely because she wanted all the sexual harassment to stop, the employee decided to stand up for herself and push back hard with an EEO complaint aimed at the managers and her co-workers the managers turned against her. When EEOC got a look at the evidence, it not only found prolonged harassment, but it also declared that there was no factual basis for charges management used to terminate her in 2013. So, it awarded her back pay to 2013.  But on top of that because management had unjustly denied her a reassignment to the Santa Barbara, CA TSA location that she was qualified for in 2013, EEOC gave her the choice of picking where she wanted to work if she returned—Greenville or Santa Barbara.  You do not see that often.  For details check out Phyllis F. v. Alejandro n. Mayorkas, DHS, TSA, EEOC No. 0120150799 (2021)

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Posted on March 7, 2021 by AdminUN

OPM ADVICE TO AGENCIES ON BARGAINING 7106(b)(1) TOPICS

You will hear more from us on this soon, but check out the new OPM document entitled, “Guidance for Implementation of Executive Order 14003 – Protecting the Federal Workforce,” which gives agency negotiators their marching orders to begin bargaining issues previously negotiable.

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Posted on March 7, 2021 by AdminUN

NEGOTIATING OVER 7106(b)(1) “TYPES” OF EMPLOYEES

This post is about unions’ newly bestowed right to negotiate over the “types… of employees or positions assigned to any organizational subdivision, work project or tour of duty.”  FLRA has ruled that the word “types” refers “to distinguishable classes, kinds, groups, or categories of employees or positions that are relevant to the establishment of staffing patterns.” For example, it found Dental Hygienists are different types of employees than Dental Assistants and temporary employees differ from full-time employees. But distinguishing between types of employees is the easy part of drafting a negotiable 7106(b)(1) proposal compared to two traps awaiting the union. Continue reading →

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