Posted on December 10, 2024 by AdminUN

CONGRATS TO AFGE LEADERS AT SSA ON TELEWORK MANEUVER

They just signed a deal with SSA management to keep telework in place for six more years.  While that is not fool-proof protection against Shadow President Musk’s ranting about forcing all feds back to their offices, it is the next best thing.  Management will be required to bargain with unions before they can terminate telework, whether the union has a contract guarantee of it or not. But a contract like this will give the union extra arguments to insist that telework stays in place at least until the contract terminates.  Under the FLRA’s latest decision about the remedy for when an agency unilaterally terminates telework, a premature change would cost agencies dearly. Click here.

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Posted on December 10, 2024 by AdminUN

OVERHEARD AT LUNCH; BRACE YOURSELVES UNIONS

Last week I met a friend for lunch at a little place in Washington, D.C. and overheard some very troubling chatter from an adjacent table.  Given the city is overrun with Congressional members, staffers, lobbyists, and other wanna-be policy wonks, loose lips are everywhere, especially with a White House transition in the offing. The three nearby chatty characters in question were talking about Trump’s team considering a proposal to furlough almost all IRS agents to give the country a one-year holiday from deep state audits. Continue reading →

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Posted on December 2, 2024 by AdminUN

WHAT IS AN AGGRAVATING FACTOR?

Looks like we Feds are going to be dealing with a lot more adverse actions soon if Trump’s Department of Efficiency has its way. Given that MSPB just issued a new precedent setting adverse action decision this is  a great time to begin brushing up on defenses that unions can raise to help employees. And that brings us to the concept of “aggravating factors.”  Continue reading →

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Posted on November 19, 2024 by AdminUN

HAD A GREAT TIME …

last week meeting with 35 union reps from around the country to review and discuss about two dozen legal precedents and tactics they can draw on to deal with the upcoming Trump Administration’s certain assault on unions, unions reps, and employees.  Lots of different unions represented and lots of ideas shared. Wish we could share what we discussed, but now is not the time to alert the Trump folks to what awaits them.

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Posted on November 19, 2024 by AdminUN

THE CHERNOBYL INCIDENT AT NRC

There is a mushroom cloud climbing into the sky over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that was triggered by management’s incompetence. NRC fired an employee for unacceptable performance back in 2018 and now must pay her around a million dollars in back plus retro leave earnings, etc. because the MSPB ruled its entire performance appraisal system sucks.  The decision lays out some standards MSPB demands appraisal systems meet before agencies can terminate employees that all unions should make sure their own agencies’ system meet. It is my guess there are a few agencies out there that similarly fail to have a legal critical element system.. Here are some details from Latisha A. Zepeda,  v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 2024 MSPB 14 (October 30, 2024).  Continue reading →

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Posted on November 7, 2024 by AdminUN

UNION NEGOTIATOR’S QUIZ

Imagine you are in this situation.  You are in term negotiations and the agency refused to bargain over three provisions that have been in the agreement for more than a decade.  It claims they are suddenly non-negotiable.  When the larger dispute went to the Panel for resolution, in line with its anti-union approach to life no matter how much it hurt employees, the Panel ruled that it would resolve all the disputes except for the ones the agency alleged to be non-negotiable. When the Panel spit out a final decision, the agency implemented it as soon as possible.  As for the three provisions the Panel did not address, the agency simply replaced the existing agreement language with its own last proposal. One of the proposals provided that employees could choose the shift they worked on by seniority, e.g., the 7 a.m. to 3:30 pm shift or the 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. shift.   What does the union do now if it believes that existing FLRA case removes any doubt about the negotiability of the proposals? Continue reading →

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Posted on November 7, 2024 by AdminUN

BOY, DO YOU NEED THIS CLASS NOW WITH TRUMP RETURNING

In his previous term, Trump turned over federal sector labor relations to deeply anti-union political operatives.  The FSIP members regularly ignored the law to screw over federal employees because most unions were unaware of how to slow them down. The FLRA overturned over 100 union arbitration victories and again most unions had not bargained contract language to slow them down.  As we have said, the upcoming FEDSMILL training program “Bargaining By The Numbers”  is going to cover over 300 legal precedents and bargaining tactics to max union bargaining power.  Among them will be about 20 slides devoted to how to stop the next round of Trump FSIP/FLRA anti-union thugs.  Still a little time to register.  Click here.

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Posted on November 3, 2024 by AdminUN

356 POWERPOINT SLIDES ON HOW TO BOOST UNION BARGAINING EXPERTISE

These slides will cover the basic legal precedents and tactical maneuvers unions need know to bargain effectively.  But they will also include legal technicalities many negotiators have forgotten and the special maneuvers the best union negotiators use when faced with a very anti-union management—or a union-hostile White House. They will be presented by a national union negotiator with over 40 years bargaining experience involving dozens of agencies.  He will add details to the slides’ content, answer questions, and orally share many of the things that no negotiator ever puts in writing. The slides and presentation will be shared with everyone attending (in person or online) the “Bargaining By The Numbers” program being put on by FEDSMILL.com and the Gilbert Training Group on November 13 and 14. If you want this information, REGISTER NOW by clicking here.

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Posted on November 3, 2024 by AdminUN

WHY EMPLOYEES NEED WRITTEN OBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals just issued a decision stating once again that agencies need not provide employees with written performance standards, much less objective ones. We have probably all seen standards that state some task should be accomplished “timely” or “with a minimum errors” or even “in compliance with agency manuals, policies and practices.”  This lack of clarity is particularly problematic with the so-called “generic performance standards.” The bottom line is that when standards are neither written nor objective they are anything the supervisor says they are at the moment his lips are moving. In this case, the employee was performing a certain task Fully Successfully under one supervisor for years, but as soon as a new supervisor showed up he announced she was unacceptable. So, what is a union to do about this?  Continue reading →

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Posted on October 30, 2024 by AdminUN

FLRA ADDRESSES HOW SPECIFIC A GRIEVANCE MUST BE TO SURVIVE

Not long ago FEDSMILL posted a piece entitled, “Grievance Strategy Issues- Part 4” which examined how specific a grievance must be to avoid several traps that can destroy an otherwise valid allegation.  FLRA just added its own view on this in a decision entitled AFGE, Local 1741 and DOJ, FBP, Michigan, 72 FLRA 501 (2021).  Unions had better rethink how specific their grievances are because you can bet the mortgage that agencies are going to start pounding them with this new decision to gut grievances no matter what the past practice is.  Continue reading →

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