Posted on August 30, 2012 by AdminUN

TAX-RELATED OVERPAYMENTS MAY BE WAIVED

Here is a new one that surprises even us. A federal agency, ironically the IRS, failed to withhold from the biweekly salary checks of its employees in Florence, KY the full income tax amount they were obligated to pay to the City of Florence. When IRS found out, it announced that the employees had received too much take home pay, which the feds call and overpayment, and that management was going to increase their city tax deductions over the amount typically due each pay period to make up for the amount it failed to withhold. Employees were upset and their union stepped in. Continue reading →

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Posted on August 28, 2012 by AdminUN

TEST YOURSELF #4- Loss of Status

Assume that a supervisor gets upset with an employee, who has long had special status in the work group, and takes all that away from her.  Up until this run-in with the supervisor, this employee was the acting manager whenever the supervisor was gone, the expert everyone was directed to when they had technical questions, trained all newcomers, given all the public speaking opportunities the group had, and was allowed to pick the most interesting cases to work on rather than have them assigned to her randomly.   What can you do for the employee if the supervisor does not downgrade her? Continue reading →

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Posted on August 28, 2012 by AdminUN

TURNING TABLES OF PENALTIES ON MANAGEMENT

Not long ago MSPB overturned an adverse action because of a mistake management made using its own table of penalties to set the penalty.  The mistake was not an obvious one.  We want to call it to your attention so you can look for it.   Continue reading →

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Posted on August 28, 2012 by AdminUN

FLRA CUFFS IG INVESTIGATORS—AND SLAMS CBP LR’S INCOMPETENCE

For far too long IG Investigators have been able to ignore virtually every union negotiated protection against unfair, intimidating, underhanded investigatory interviews of employees. But FLRA just changed that in with NTEU and Customs & Border Protection decisions. (See NTEU and CBP, 66 FLRA 904 (2012)) Continue reading →

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Posted on August 24, 2012 by AdminUN

WONDERFUL NFFE WEB SITES

We like to recognize the really good local union web sites. Our hope is that highlighting the really good ones will give us all a little extra energy to improve what we have. Union web sites are still in their infancy.  As a group, we do not seem to yet have a clear idea of what to do with them. Do we just store information for members or give non-members more than a glimpse at the home page to boost their willingness to join? Do we push information at unit employees by e-mailing them alerts of new stories or just service them when they decide to look at our web sites? Do we want unit employees to use it to communicate with union leaders and one another, or is it just a one-way communication from us to them? Even when we know the answers to those questions, often we do not know how to make the site very user-friendly.  So, as with most FEDSMILL posts we hope this gives you some ideas. Continue reading →

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Posted on August 24, 2012 by AdminUN

EEO INVESTIGATIONS ARE FORMAL DISCUSSIONS

Unions reps have a right to be invited to an EEO investigator’s interview of unit employees. FLRA considers these interviews, even if done one person at a time, to be formal discussions solong as the employee has moved beyond an EEO charge and filed a formal complaint. Continue reading →

Posted in EEO/Discrimination, Formal Discussions, ULPs | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on August 22, 2012 by AdminUN

HOW TO BARGAIN AROUND PAY FREEZES

Thanks to warring politicians, it looks like we are headed for another year without an annual pay adjustment in January.  Consequently, unions need to focus more on how to increase employee compensation through contract negotiations.  One way to do that is to negotiate for guaranteed performance awards for employees.  Very few federal sector contracts have them, but they are worth millions for those that do.  Here is an example such agreements from one of the contracts in our Compare Contracts menu bar above. Continue reading →

Posted in Bargaining Tactics, Compensation | Tagged | 2 Comments

Posted on August 22, 2012 by AdminUN

INTERESTING CONTRACT CLAUSES- NFFE & FOREST SERVICE  

All union negotiators should be aware of what is in other contracts, but that can be hard to do as many exceed 200 pages. So, from time-to-time our small army of FEDSMILL researchers will go through contracts to highlight the more interesting clauses. Today we are taking a look at the NFFE and Forest Service contract, which you can find in the Compare Contracts portion of the FEDSMILL menu bar. Continue reading →

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Posted on August 21, 2012 by AdminUN

CONGRATS TO AFGE’S NEW PRESIDENT. IS THERE TROUBLE AHEAD?

Congratulations to J. David Cox who just moved up from AFGE Secretary-Treasurer to National President this week after a four-person election at their Vegas convention. If you have any doubts about how active of a leader he is going to be, take a look at the AFGE web site. Cox changed it overnight. The new site is attractive and highly useful. The home page is not cluttered, the menu bar provides automatic drop down pages without the reader having to click, and it even offers outsiders helpful information.  Our favorite feature might be the very easy-to-access news that is organized by major agency under the Agency menu.  Within seconds, a reader from these departments can see items of the greatest interest to their agency. Continue reading →

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Posted on August 20, 2012 by AdminUN

GET PAID TO USE YOUR SMARTPHONE

It looks like the Feds are ready to pay employees to use their own smart phones rather than government equipment. Take a look at the article entitled, “Use Your Own Smartphone — And Get Paid To Do It” by Nicole Blake Johnson in today’s Federal Times. Apparently, NTEU is already in discussions with the NRC to implement the idea, and there are a number of negotiable issues for unions to address.

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