Most contracts merely require the union to put the following in the grievance: 1- Article and section violated, 2- Description of the grieved event, and 3- Remedy desired. As clear as that or similar language appears, there are some drafting tips that will boost your chances of winning. Continue reading
Although great web sites are not the cure for everything that ails unions, they can do a lot of good, such as A-Z topic pages. So, we like to point out examples of good pages when time permits—and AFGE has a really good one for the following eight reasons: Continue reading
How much do you really know about that facts of life and particularly pregnant employees? Probably not enough, especially if you cannot answer the five questions below. . The EEOC is putting some renewed emphasis on making sure that employees–whether pregnant, hoping to get pregnant or glad the pregnancy is over—are protected under the several laws that grant them rights, such as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). Not long ago it published a wonderful Q&A guide about pregnancy. Feel free to ignore it if you already know the answer to the following five questions. Otherwise, click over to it and take about five minutes to catch up. Continue reading
AFGE recently announced that it has paid off the mortgage on its headquarters building, located in a prime spot just a couple of blocks from the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC. Based on its DOL report, that will free up a million dollars or more that the union can use to boost the representational return on the $20.00 a month each member pays in dues, e.g., more staff, more media support of federal employees, more lobbying, etc. The Federation has done a lot of great work over a recent 12 year period driving up membership in locals with chronically low membership, raising its annual income from $39 million to $119 million, and reducing its financial liabilities in one year by $23 million. Finally owning its national headquarters is yet another financial achievement. The union has a lot to be proud of.
The FLRA just issued a decision describing the creative way that one union structured sequester furloughs through an MOU. The National Association of Independent Labor (NAIL) negotiated the following concerning employee rights to pick the days on which they would serve their required number of furlough days: The “normal schedule for furlough would be one . . . eight[-]hour day per week.” But the MOU also provided that “mission/workload permitting, [bargaining-unit employees] may elect and be permitted to complete the furlough requirements in increments of between eight . . . and forty . . . hours per week . . . [i]f the schedule does not impact mission/workload requirements.” The arbitrator and FLRA upheld an award of back pay to employees when the agency failed to live by the agreement language. It is something to think about when the agency wants total control over who is furloughed when. NAIL, 68 FLRA 279 (2015)
The Patent Office Professional Association is one of our favorite unions if for no other reason than it knows how to protect benefits once negotiated. It wrote the book on how a union can dig its heals in when management comes looking for take backs. Don’t consider yourself a top notch union negotiator until you have read every page of its record over the years. POPA, 60 FLRA 869 (2005) is only the beginning. Looking over its home page, we noticed that it still has in place incentive award agreements that guarantee big cash awards. That is not an easy feat, but totally deserving given the cash agencies have set aside to reward SES executives. We have taken the liberty of dropping into our post below a page from POPA’s web site (popa.org) that describes its programs. Bravo POPA and thanks for showing us some very sophisticated tactics over the years. Continue reading
If your read Joe Davidson’s column in Washington Post on February 16th, you already know about AFGE’s latest achievement in Homeland Security. We know it is a blockbuster because we cannot think of the last time a union succeeded in getting an agency to reclassify thousands of positions so that the journey-level grade is raised from a GS-9 to a GS-12. That will not only increase their annual salaries, but their pensions, overtime pay, and tax-deferred saving potential. WOW! Position classifications are the toughest problem to solve. Law prohibits unions from grieving classification decisions, bargaining over them, or even going to court. In our experience, change like this only comes about because of persuasion and power, but we are sure it did not hurt that AFGE represents the great majority of DHS employees.
While national union leaders are constantly asking agency managers to involve employees in workplace decisions, some leaders operate under constitutions that deliberately exclude the best local union leaders from also setting internal union policy. We can’t point you to a court case that states unequivocally that it is illegal to do so, but we are going to lay out the arguments about why it could be illegal. We will also spend a few words on the far more important point, i.e., why would it ever benefit a union to exclude its top talent from leadership positions. Suppose your union has a rule that prohibits anyone from holding more than one elected office, e.g., local union presidents may not simultaneously serve on the national executive board. If they want one, they must give up the other. Continue reading
J. Russell George has led a decent life and we are not going to suggest that he is anything other than a fine person. In fact, we will always remember him for what may his single most notable achievement in life, namely, dating Michelle Obama before “Barry” did. However, just as the First Lady reached a quick decision to move on from him, it is time that Treasury gave the same decision some thought and retired him from his job as the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) where he is regularly either misleading the public or serving up reports that Congress ignores. For example, he recently issued a report announcing that among the thousands and thousands of employees IRS moves in and out of duty status each year as the tax work ebbs and flows, it returns to duty several who have had discipline or performance problems. (It is all over the media cheaply filling column inches or on air minutes for them.) That is a fair observation, but it was not fair to suggest that this is due solely to IRS mismanagement. Here is what this IG did not tell us that would have completed the story and put the blame where it belongs, which is not with IRS. Continue reading