How ironic that just a few short months after stripping federal employees of any right to challenge the substance or design of a furlough, suddenly the Board is concerned with absurdities. The case involved an employee who was fired for being physically unable to work for a prolonged period of time. Wren v. Dept. of Army, 2014 MSPB 20 (2014) Continue reading
Can management refuse to even consider employee applicants who meet the minimum qualifications for a promotion vacancy? For example, could it refuse to consider, rate and rank qualified employees because they were bald or vegetarians? How about if they were carpoolers, graduates of public universities, or even Yankee fans? Of course not. But, how about if they work or live outside the commuting area of the vacancy? A lot of managers think they can exclude otherwise qualified agency applicants from any promotion consideration based on where the employees live or work or even when they apply. We don’t, and here’s why. Continue reading
It has been a long time since the National Treasury Employees Union organized only employees of the Treasury department. Today, it represents employees of dozens of federal agencies, and in the last few months has welcomed the employees of two other agencies. The first was the Consumer Financial Protection Board, which is an independent agency created after the financial meltdown and scandals the Obama Administration inherited. The other is the National Capitol Region of the National Park Service, whose Rangers and maintenance staff previously had been represented by the painters’ union. Congrats to NTEU and anyone else organizing unrepresented employees. And congrats to the Park Service employees who believing they were not getting what they needed from their prior union did something about it.
There is no shortage of publicly available newsletters covering federal employment issues. However, AFGE has one that focuses on the news from the perspective of employees. It is a very worthwhile source of information. If your local likes to pass on information to employees to help them understand the need to stand up for themselves in a united way, this is a good place to get material.
Law requires selecting officials to explain to non-selected BQ promotion applicants why they were passed over. In fact, it requires them to be quite specific about why. See if you can figure out which of these selecting official explanations meets the requirements of law.
Laborradio.org just reported that the AFGE Council of locals in the Environmental Protection Administration has settled a grievance for $35 million in retroactive overtime pay. EPA management had told these employees they were not covered by the overtime laws–when they were. The union stood up for them and worked this dispute for nearly six years before management relented. This is another fine example of a union protecting employees when many of them did not even know they were being cheated. It is unclear what this will mean for those EPA employees not represented by AFGE.
Hats off to AFGE for its recently published article revealing who gets paid the most–millions actually– to do government work. It is not who you think, and you will never hear about this story on FOX, from Rush, or around the Koch brothers’ household. It is a “gotta read” piece so that you can share the facts with friends, family and just plain folks when they take shots at the overpaid public employees. Here is a hint. With the income just one of the guys receives from your taxes, 400 more federal GS employees could be hired by the Social Security Administration to clear the backlog of disability claims, the VA to help vets, the SEC to clean up Wall Street, or the IRS to catch all the folks hiding assets in overseas bank accounts.
Here’s a hint. It is someone over 40 years old. Need another hint? It is also someone who applied for promotion. Still stumped? It is someone who got the promotion instead of a substantially older applicant who wants to file an age discrimination allegation. EEOC and the courts have recognized that even when everyone applying for a particular promotion is over 40, disappointed candidates might have an age discrimination case if the selectee is over 40 but substantially younger than they are. Age discrimination does not require that the selectee (or selecting official) be under 40 years old. Continue reading
OPM, FLRA, and the courts may be highly reluctant to order an agency to disclose a crediting plan to a grievant or the union, but EEOC is not. It has addressed the issue over a dozen times and developed a good body of case law that the Authority should draw from to deal with this disclosure issue. Continue reading