Posted on April 1, 2015 by AdminUN

UNION POWER: YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW

Every American school kid learns that one reason the Brits lost the American Revolution was that its tactics that once worked so well for them, did not work on the American battle field.  Brightly colored red coats marching in large formations and shooting in volleys intimidated and overpowered other armies on open battlefields, but it turned out to be the opposite of what was needed to fight in the American wildness.  Americans have learned the same lesson in the Middle East over the last two decades.  It is not how many boots are on the ground, but the clout each soldier brings to the battle.  Multi-talented Special Operation troops are often many times more effective than traditional infantry.  What unions need to take from these two and hundreds of other examples is that what made them powerful yesterday is unlikely to work as well tomorrow.  The environment changes, the opposition adjusts, and technology presents new options.  Union leaders planning for the future need to think about the fights ahead, not solely how they won in the past.  What will make them powerful tomorrow?  Here are some of our thoughts. Continue reading →

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Posted on March 30, 2015 by AdminUN

HOW MANAGEMENT KEEPS UNION MEMBERSHIP LOW

If you have been following us for a while you know we have often publicly expressed our anguish over union locals where the percentage of unit employees who are union members is less than half the national average throughout multiple terms of office for the local leaders.  For example, if 60% of the employees represented by a national union are members, then locals below 25% membership are the kind we are talking about.  It would seem that national union leaders owe it to the top-performing locals to  fix these situations promptly.  They certainly have a number of options ranging from the subtle to the more substantive or even shocking.  For example, Continue reading →

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Posted on March 30, 2015 by AdminUN

GOOD NEWS FOR UNION  TRUE BELIEVERS

Thanks to the Washington Post for an article Sunday about how the thousands of temporary employees Microsoft hires through contractors, to avoid giving them the Microsoft benefits, have unionized and just won the right to a couple weeks of paid leave each year.  It is an encouraging story for those of us who understand what effective unions can do for this country as well as a revealing one that reaffirms some of our strong suspicions about how to run unions.  If you take the time to read the story, stop when you get to the part about how a law firm won millions and millions in back pay for these temporary employees before the employees organized and try to imagine what could have been done if a union had sponsored that lawsuit and used it to launch the union.  Also don’t dismiss the importance of the union keeping dues at $2.00 a month.  Unions may be almost immune to competition from other unions thanks to no raid pacts, but they have to compete just as hard as any merchant or company for a share of employees’ take home pay.  In other words, why should a prospective member give $19.00 a pay period to a union when s/he can instead use those dollars to buy five cable movies, a very nice bottle of wine, or take 19 chances at a Powerball fortune?  You will hear more about this from us soon because we believe keeping union dues low is critical to union survival.

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Posted on March 25, 2015 by AdminUN

CAN THIS EMPLOYEE BE REFUSED UNION MEMBERSHIP?

Suppose a non-unit employee in your agency was so angry with your union that he put the following message on his Facebook page addressing the members of your local: “rise up and create a grassroots movement so strong that your National knows you will either have your vote or you will decertify them and get a new union. And[] don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t decertify your union if they become corrupt….Look at UnionFacts.org. There are step[‑]by[‑]step instructions on how to get rid of a corrupt union.”  Now suppose that a short time later that employee was reassigned into a position in your unit and asked to become a member of your union.  Can you refuse him membership?  That is what FLRA had to decide this week. Continue reading →

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Posted on March 24, 2015 by AdminUN

COULD THIS HAPPEN TO YOUR LOCAL?

The following statement appears on a local union’s web site:  “Per IRS law, we are required to inform the membership of …. Local …  that as of May15, 2012 this local lost its tax-exempt status with an automatic revocation penalty due to failure to not filing IRS tax returns for at least three consecutive years (2009-2013). The former treasurer did not file taxes for … local ….for at least 4 years.” Any national union can track compliance of their locals to ensure that one of them does not fail to timely file with IRS or the Dept. of Labor.  In most cases, those two agencies notify the national union when there is a problem with one of the locals.  But, as we all know, “stuff happens,” personal relationships can diminish any pressure on the local to comply, and if the union’s Constitution & Bylaws are silent then the union leadership lacks a heavy club to swing.  Placing an internal obligation on every local and giving the National President power to act fast could help avoid these problems.  (We deliberately omitted the identity of the local to save it any further embarrassment.) Don’t let this happen in your union because this is not the only union local that has lost its IRS tax-exempt status—not by far.

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Posted on March 24, 2015 by AdminUN

REASSIGNMENT VIA THE EEO ROUTE

What’s a guy to do when his wife, who works for the same agency as he does, is transferred from San Diego to Washington, DC, he applies for a reassignment to DC himself under the Agency’s Married Core Series Transfer Policy to be with her, and he is rejected? He could file a grievance and try to prove he was entitled to the reassignment or he could file an EEO charge and shift the burden on to the agency to come up with a legitimate reason why it did not reassign him.  If the guy can also identify eight other women who have worked for the agency who were moved under that program he has a great case of disparate treatment, particularly if the agency never gives him a reason for denying the reassignment request. Earlier this month, the EEOC faced just such a set of facts.  Continue reading →

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Posted on March 24, 2015 by AdminUN

MILESTONE MARCH

March 2015 has been a very good month for FEDSMILL.com.  We posted our 500th article since beginning this venture in September 2011.  We also set a new personal record for the number of articles read in a single day with our posts being read over 1,800 times on March 12th.  Google Analytics also tells us that 9,000 articles are viewed each month on average.  Beyond those achievements, EEOC has agreed to send us e-copies of its newest federal employee decisions every week or so. LEXIS, WESTLAW and CYBERFEDS are the only other outfits that get the data currently.  While those three outfits will post every decision to their databases (and charge a fee for you to see them), we are going to comb through them to make union reps aware of select precedents, decisions, and other information that are particularly useful to representing employees.  Finally, we have started to pick out very popular FEDSMILL posts from the past and repost them for new subscribers who may have missed them.  Continue reading →

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Posted on March 22, 2015 by AdminUN

DUTY TIME AND THE NCAA TOURNAMENT

As March Madness continues to escalate over the next two weeks, there will inevitably be employees disciplined for checking in on their favorite team on duty time via agency computers. So, we thought we would share with you a brand new FLRA decision where it upheld an arbitrator’s decision to overturn an employee’s seven day suspension for similar violations. Who knows when the arguments of this case might come in handy. What follows is straight out of the Authority’s decision in NNU, 68 FLRA 360 (March 2015) Continue reading →

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Posted on March 22, 2015 by AdminUN

THE RIGHT TO A SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETER

EEOC has said it all before, but yet another agency needed it said again when an employee with a severe hearing disability was not provided a sign language interpreter. EEOC pointed out that although the employee was provided with an interpreter during her initial training period, she was not during standup meetings or safety talks after that initial training period.  In its defense the agency said (1) it was up to the employee to request a sign language interpreter before it was obligated to provide one, and (2) the agency knew the employee could read lips.  The EEOC shot down each of those arguments by one again spelling out certain legal guarantees the deaf and hearing of hearing employees have.  Then, it clobbered the agency with penalties for not bothering to comply with legal precedent. Continue reading →

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Posted on March 22, 2015 by AdminUN

FORMER EXECUTIVE VP PROPOSES NTEU CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

Frank Ferris, former National Executive VP of NTEU, spent 38 years with NTEU operating under a union constitution put in place in the mid-60s.  The 60’s were very different times for NTEU.  It did not even represent all of IRS in the 60’s and IRS was the only agency it represented.  Today, NTEU represents all of IRS and over two dozen other agencies.  It had one office and less than a half-dozen staff 50 years ago.  Today, it has offices in seven locations, more than 130 staff, and tens of millions in financial assets. Labor relations back then were merely an executive branch program, grievances could not go to binding arbitration, and contracts were typically local ones and just a few pages long.  Now there is a labor statute, grievances can go to the Supreme Court if needed, and NTEU contracts are generally hundreds of pages long covering thousands from coast to coast and in other countries.  In the 60s the President and Congress considered feds valuable assets, not political targets to be penalized at nearly every opportunity as they are now.  Back then few federal employees knew anything about running a union whereas today thousands of federal employee union leaders have a good grasp of labor/employment law, the organizational mechanics of running a union, and what works and does not work.  Most importantly, the current NTEU constitution was put in place to change it from a fraternal group focused on half dozen issues operating under the heavy influence of IRS executives into a legitimate labor union that would represent all of IRS.  Thankfully, it did all those things—and more.  It also enabled NTEU to create a strong national office that determines which cases go to arbitration, which staffers service each local and unit, who gets appointed to most committees, and almost all policy formulation.    However, having been with NTEU for most of those changes, the former VP is positioning the delegates at the upcoming convention to have an opportunity to reconsider what they need to have another 50 years of success. Given that NTEU is about to change its national leadership for only the third time in those 50 years, this is an especially  good time to focus on the near and far future. Continue reading →

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