Here is something to watch. The National Federation of Federal Employees just announced it now represents private sector, non-federal, non-governmental workers. In July, the NLRB certified it as the representative of the “Golden Triangle Business Improvement District” employees, whose parent company of “Block-by-Block,” which is part of the “SMS Holdings Company.” We are happy for NFFE and for the now union-represented employees. Continue reading
To begin, it is the latest union to organize a new group of federal employees, and for that we pass on our Congrats. But beyond that it is a union that has quietly served notice on the much bigger and better known federal sector unions such as AFGE, NTEU, AFSCME and SEIU that it intends to be a player in the federal government, especially among the more professional occupations. For example, its newest unit brings to over 2,000 the number of federal Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) it represents—and that raises the question of why white collar, professionals employees in very high profile agencies are choosing IFPTE over those other unions. After all, what union would not want to represent employees at the— Continue reading
MSPB just overturned the removal of an employee on a Maxiflex schedule. The agency thought the employee had been tardy when he failed to report to work at an early enough time to fulfill his obligation to complete 80 hours of work in the pay period. This case shines a bright light on just what can the agency do, or be allowed to do by the collective bargaining agreement, when an employee fails to work the full 80 hours of a maxiflex pay period. Continue reading
Check out this article on micro-unions. While they are unlikely to appear in the federal sector, they might help revive the private sector.
USATODAY published one of those rare articles looking at how members want their unions run. In short, the players tossed out a paternalistic, territorial and secretive leader who listened only to a small, but powerful minority of players. In his place, they elected a woman in the hope “that the combination of her intellect and her lack of a basketball background will spawn a welcome mix of humble effectiveness that makes for a more inclusive process.” Louis Amundson, a player, described the decision this way. “The idea was that it was the complete opposite of Billy. Before with Billy, the top players would kind of just dictate what they wanted, and then Billy would kind of dictate what he wanted, and then everybody else would kind of just fall in line. Now you have somebody who’s maybe not used to being in this sports realm, it’ll become more even, more (democratic).” But our favorite story line came from the selectee herself, “It’s a new day. It’s not a one-person, Superman, ‘I’ve got this.’ It’s going to be a team.” This is a must read article for anyone concerned with leading modern unions at the national level.
Although it is fashionable among unions to blame managers for the widespread failure of partnership, there is a decent argument that union leaders themselves helped pound the stake through the heart of that very worthy experiment. How? “Integrity” is a good one word answer. No union leader will enjoy hearing this, but if we stick our heads in the sand and pretend the problem does not exist, we might as well be the kind of managers we so often condemn. Continue reading
Although this is hardly something new, it is worth repeating. If an arbitrator sustains a grievance, but denies the union’s desired remedy on three different grounds, it is not enough to file exceptions attacking only one of those grounds. FLRA will not even consider an objection to a single basis for the remedy denial unless the union challenges all three grounds. The union must remove all valid reasons for denying the remedy before FLRA will seriously consider imposing the remedy or even remanding. Continue reading
Here is how FLRA described the scheme, “The Agency planned a seventy-fifth anniversary celebration on a Saturday at the Shenandoah National Park (the event). Several weeks before the event, the Agency scheduled all of its employees to work that day, but gave each employee a day off earlier in the week so that the Saturday shift constituted part of the employees’ scheduled tours of duty.” (AFGE, 67 FLRA 489 (2014)) Because the Authority has held the substance of shift changes non-negotiable and a one-time change might not qualify as a unilateral change in past practice, unions have only one way left to protect their members from shift scams—and AFGE just made that shield bigger and stronger. Continue reading