Author Archives: AdminUN

About AdminUN

FEDSMILL staff has over 40 years of federal sector labor relations experience on the union as well as management side of the table and even some time as a neutral.

BARGAINING WITH AN ANTI-UNION GOVERNMENT Since the Trump empire of hotels, resorts, golf courses and other developments will remain heavily dependent on good service from its employees and relationships with their unions, for this posting we are going to assume … Continue reading

Posted in Union Administration | Tagged | Leave a comment

WHAT HAPPENS NOW? Having lived through a few White House changes, we thought we would share what we know about what will happen next in the federal sector labor relations arena. In the next week or so the President-elect’s team … Continue reading

Posted in Union Rights | Tagged | Leave a comment

HR SPECIALISTS ALERT: DISABILITY LAW IS EVOLVING FOR YOU Suppose a manager calls HR one morning to report that one of her probationary employees has refused to perform a certain function of the job by the established due date and … Continue reading

Posted in Disability, Reasonable Accommodations | Tagged | 2 Comments

PROBATIONERS: WINNING REINSTATEMENT ON A TECHNICALITY Unless a probationary employee can claim her rights under some employment law were violated, it is 99% certain that if the agency proposes to terminate her she is a goner. In fact, long gone … Continue reading

Posted in Probation Period | Tagged | Leave a comment

FLRA INVITES UNION ATTORNEYS TO EXPAND THEIR ENTITLEMENT TO FEES One of the sweeter benefits for unions is that they are often entitled to receive attorney fees when they win back pay for an employee. When unions win fees they … Continue reading

Posted in Attorney Fees | Tagged | Leave a comment

THE LAW OF CONTRACT RATIFICATION: TEST YOURSELF A 2016 decision out of the Authority has added to the body of law about how unions ratify collective bargaining agreements. See AFGE, Local 1815 and Dept. of the Army, 69 FLRA 309 … Continue reading

Posted in Test Yourself | Tagged | Leave a comment

IS THIS A VIOLATION OF LAW? Let’s just consider this a hypothetical. Suppose, one federal union allows it legal staff to keep any attorney fees they collect that exceed the attorney’s annual salary from the union. For example, if the … Continue reading

Posted in Attorney Fees | Tagged | Leave a comment

HOW TO GET FLRA TO BLOCK AN FSIP DECISION More than a few parties, whether labor or management, who have lost a case before the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) have concluded that the decision is illegal, if not even … Continue reading

Posted in FSIP | Tagged | Leave a comment

TEN WAYS TO REVERSE A UNION PRESIDENT’S DECISIONS When union presidents abuse (or simply misuse) power, members have a few options available to bring the union’s CEO back to the reality that they are presidents, not potentates nor pontiffs. Given … Continue reading

Posted in Union Administration | Tagged | 1 Comment

DISCIPLINING THE EMPLOYEE ON INTERMITTENT FMLA LEAVE Although there are some minor differences between the federal employees’ FMLA rights and everyone else in the country, they are not big enough that advice written for private sector employers and employees cannot … Continue reading

Posted in FMLA | Tagged | Leave a comment