Long-time FEDSMILL readers might remember our posting entitled, “FDIC Flips, Flops, Flaps, & Flails” in which we described how mightily FDIC management was struggling to get off the hook of a multi-million dollar class action age and race discrimination case NTEU had won in arbitration. Well, to make a long story short, it stopped struggling recently and paid out $2.61 million to the harmed employees. Continue reading
A Homeland Security Agent was fired for falsifying an official form. When he tried to defend himself by pointing out how supervisory employees who committed the same offense were not fired, DHS management and the MSPB Judge would not let him see that evidence. The terminated employee appealed, and got not only the information but another chance to prove his defense. Continue reading
Thousands of feds are facing notices of proposed furloughs and the dilemma of whether or not to challenge them via the oral/written reply process or beyond. A challenge is more likely to pay off than you think if you follow these steps. Continue reading
Agencies have the right to terminate an employee who refuses an order to reassign, but only so long as the agency has a bona fide need for the employee to be located elsewhere. Or at least that is what the law has suggested for about three decades. MSPB just overturned that approach and made it harder to terminate employees for refusing a directed reassignment. Continue reading
Most people think so, but now a federal circuit court has raised the possibility that it might not be in every case. For generations employers have fired employees for failing to report to work on time. In this case before the court, the employee had problems arriving on time because of a disability and asked for a reasonable accommodation allowing him to arrive late from time-to-time. Although allowed to do so for a while, the employer changed its mind and suspended him when he was not timely. The employee lost his discrimination case before a U.S. District Court, but the Circuit Court declared that although punctuality was normally essential, “physical presence at or by a specific time is not, as a matter of law, an essential function of all employment.” It sent the case back to the lower court to examine the facts of this individual’s situation rather than merely accepting the employer’s assertion that it is. That opens the door to a potential ruling that there are some jobs where punctuality is not essential. This will be an interesting case to follow. See McMillian v. City of New York, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 4454 (2d Cir. Mar. 4, 2013),
That is how much AFGE’s total membership increased between January 2001 and January 2013. It just reported to the Department of Labor that it has a total of 299,642 members. Congrats to them for all the focus and effort it took to grow so quickly. However, for the first time in those 12 years of growth the union’s total receipts for the year actually dropped, by $7 million dollars, despite a one-year membershoip increase of over 10,000.