Posted on May 19, 2013 by AdminUN

WHY VA NURSES SHOULD STUDY WALL STREET

Wall Street moguls might not care about values, ethics, morality, statutes, humanity, the environment, the common good, or world peace, but the U.S. Veteran Affairs nurses could benefit greatly from doing what they do.  Those who run The Street know how to protect themselves personally from risk, profit from information, produce wealth through relationships, accumulate power, shape the future to their advantage, and, except for a sprinkling of indictments here and there, always come out on top.  That is precisely what VA nurses need from their labor unions, but are not getting.  Here is why. Continue reading →

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Posted on May 18, 2013 by AdminUN

OUR FAVORITE APPROPRIATE ARRANGEMENT PROPOSALS (Pt. 1)

Agency managers are free to change anything in an employee’s working conditions they choose (and whenever they choose) so long as they are exercising a 7106 management right.  They can assign an employee new duties overnight, move him to another building  in the commuting area, double the number of factors on which the employee will be evaluated, add five new conduct rules, abolish his formal training programs, and even reassign him from the day shift to the night shift.  The only thing standing in an agency’s way of instantly making an employee’s working conditions intolerable is a union and its right to negotiate “appropriate arrangements” to lessen the adverse impact of the change.  Without a union highly skilled in these negotiations federal employees are the proverbial sitting ducks. Continue reading →

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Posted on May 18, 2013 by AdminUN

NTEU REELS IN $2.61 MILLION FOR FDIC DISCRIMINATION VICTIMS

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 →

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Posted on May 18, 2013 by AdminUN

MSPB EXPANDS ACCUSED EMPLOYEE’S RIGHT TO INFORMATION

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 →

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Posted on April 24, 2013 by AdminUN

HOW TO CHALLENGE FURLOUGH PROPOSALS

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 →

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Posted on April 16, 2013 by AdminUN

DIRECTED REASSIGNMENT CASE LAW OVERHAULED

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 →

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Posted on April 16, 2013 by AdminUN

COMPENSATION INCREASES UNIONS CAN BARGAIN (Pt. 2)

There are around two dozen ways unions can negotiate to put extra cash in members’ pockets.  In Part 1 of this two-part posting we covered 12 of them.  Now for some others, some of which are not yet rock solid case law. Continue reading →

Posted in Bargaining, Bargaining Negotiability, Compensation | Tagged | 2 Comments

Posted on April 16, 2013 by AdminUN

IS PUNCTUALITY AN ESSENTIAL JOB ELEMENT?

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),

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Posted on April 16, 2013 by AdminUN

100,000 NEW UNION MEMBERS

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.

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Posted on March 14, 2013 by AdminUN

COMPENSATION INCREASES UNIONS CAN BARGAIN(Pt.1)

There are over two dozen ways unions can negotiate to put extra cash in members’ pockets. That is great news for employees during these times of wage freezes and yet another reason they should support their union. Here is our list of compensation issues that FLRA has already held to be negotiable.  In Part 2 we will review those that appear negotiable given FLRA precedent, but which the Authority has not yet squarely addressed. Continue reading →

Posted in Bargaining, Bargaining Negotiability, Compensation | Tagged , | 2 Comments