Back in 2012 David Cox won the AFGE National Presidency in a squeaker with 51% of the vote, but a short three years later he roared back into the job last week with 63% of the vote. Given AFGE’s tradition of deciding winners by razor thin margins, it is worth looking at how Cox got such an historically wide support so quickly. Continue reading
With the curtains about to roll back on the annual budget theatrics for us, it is time to think about what role labor law plays in it. The most dreaded response to a budget shortfall from any agency will be a RIF. In all likelihood, no one on either side of that table wants to do that, but those on the agency side will be working against some deadlines to get folks off the rolls. Standing in their way of meeting those deadlines could be one very powerful part of the labor laws, as AFGE demonstrated not long ago. Continue reading
This may come as a shock to lots of folks on the management side of the table, but a promotion applicant is not the best person for the job just because the ranking and selecting officials say so. If the agency does a sloppy job of selecting an employee and the employee/union challenge the selection, it can mean a big bundle of back pay, an even bigger attorney fees award, a bigger-than-both-of-them-combined compensatory damages award, and an order that the managers involved with the selection be disciplined. The prohibition against filing a grievance to challenge a properly ranked and rated promotion certificate does not apply if the employee alleges discrimination and invokes the “plainly superior” doctrine. Given how easy it is for an employee to meet his/her initial burden of proof, we are very surprised that there are not more of these cases. Continue reading
The NLRB recently issued a decision clobbering an employer with penalties for its repeated and substantial violations of the labor law. Take a look at this blog post about it for a quick overview of the decision. This is something a union might want to show FLRA or an arbitrator the next time it is litigating a very serious ULP matter. If you sit on the other side of the table, this is just one more indication that the potential remedy for persistent illegal activity might be something far worse than a simple 6 months slap-on-the-wrist posting.
If you have been watching the cases coming out of FLRA the last year or so, you probably noticed that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to lose a lot of back pay cases to NTEU. Moreover, they are big cases worked out of the union’s national Negotiations department as class action grievances involving thousands of employees. Given that CBP decided to exhaust every avenue of appeal, including asking for reconsiderations when it loses initially at FLRA, some of the back pay claims go back to the last century. It is a good bet that the total amount due employees is measured in the hundreds of millions. And from what we can see, the time has come for CBP to pay—or refuse to comply with the law despite being a law enforcement agency. For example, Continue reading
NTEU convention delegates elected Tony Reardon today to be the next National President of NTEU, giving him more than 85% of the vote. For the past decade or so Tony has managed the union’s finances, accounting, real estate, information technology, meeting management, investments, human resources, payroll, and capital acquisitions. He does not have the background in representational matters that some other staff and chapter leaders do, but that just might be what helps NTEU turn around some troubling internal trends in membership, bargaining clout, political involvement, and even representation. Continue reading
The Dean of the Duke University School of Business is getting some publicity today for what he said about leadership. A reporter asked him about teaching leadership and the Dean responded, “The classic model of leadership is to find the smartest person in the room and have that person tell everyone what to do. That is not the kind of leadership that produces the innovation the world needs. The kind of leader who succeeds today is the leader who can bring people together and make great things happen through collaboration.” We could not agree more, but he missed a critical ingredient. Continue reading
While the NTEU convention does not start officially until August 9, its Resolutions Committee meets this week behind doors closed to delegates and members. Under its Constitution, the NTEU National President appoints a little more than a half-dozen local leaders to the Convention Resolution Committee to prepare a recommendation on each proposed Constitutional amendment for the delegates who will vote on them next week. Even though the committee could finish its work as early as Wednesday, the delegates will not see the recommendations until the night before the convention begins next Monday, when they must start voting on them. A copy is never posted for members or even those who proposed the amendment. In addition to their closed door summit, the committee members’ identities are not shared with the approximately 250 local union leaders until the convention starts. That ensures that these seven to nine committee members are not lobbied by the NTEU local leaders and members spread across over 30 agencies. Even the people proposing amendments cannot get to them. Although the committee has before it the proposed resolutions and a short rationale from the person proposing the change, only the National President can lobby the Committee to move in a certain direction. Typically, this is done by giving them a draft report with the President’s recommendations on what they should do with each proposed change. The President also places staff in the committee room to monitor their deliberations. This is not shared with delegates at any time. But not all unions have such tight, centralized control over their conventions. Continue reading