AFGE LED THE WAY ON TELEWORK TERMINATION REMEDIES

Last week NTEU announced it had just won several arbitrations overturning the nutty White House “vengeance-against-feds” decision to unilaterally terminate telework programs throughout government. Great legal work. In assume other unions are having similar success and that is wonderful. But the real measure of whether unions are successful with these grievances will be whether they get tangible remedies that will make members cherish them even more.  My all-time favorite telework remedy was won by AFGE in a case entitled, HUD and AFGE, Local 3856,  66 FLRA No. 23 (2011).  FLRA upheld the union’s grievance wherein “the Arbitrator directed the Agency to compensate teleworkers for additional mileage travel expenses agreements (the travel-expenses remedy) that they incurred as a result of not being able to telework under the terms of their prior agreements.” KA-CHING, KA-CHING.  But there are also some other great remedies to be had.  For example,…  

Where an employee had to take annual or sick leave, but for his denial of telework.  Maybe an employee wanted to attend a child’s school event for which he would have only needed two hours of leave if on telework.  But, because telework was denied, the employee had to take three hours of leave. That employee is owed leave reimbursement.

Another possibility would involve employees who had been granted telework as a reasonable accommodation for a disability or religious reasons.  If the union grievance alleged discrimination when the Trumpers took their vengeance, they should be able to ask that the harmed employee be given monetary damages on top of any commuting costs—or even reinstatement if they employees had to quit when denied the accommodation.

And let’s not forget attorney fees, which the union is entitled to claim if any unit employee covered by its grievance received any form of back pay.

Unions with a fresh telework arbitration victory in their hands might want to think about starting to collect the information they will need to implement a thorough remedy, e.g., employees who had to take extra leave, employees denied accommodations, etc.  And don’t be shy about contacting those members who were fired by the Trumpers.  If they lost telework while still employed, they are entitled to cash too.

Check out our post entitled, “FLRA Boosts Telework Remedies” for even more legal justification for aggressive remedies.