Brace yourself, America—and especially federal employees. The culture war is about to flare to near-nuclear levels over the recent Secret Service Agents’ interaction with a salacious slice of Columbia’s service sector. First there will be accusations that federal employees’ values are not those of normal Americans, and if the agents are not terminated shortly there will be a wave of stories about how hard it is to fire federal employees. A few TV talking heads, perhaps even the misogynistic one with a string of three divorces so far and a predilection for recreational oxycontin, will call us feds godless. So, what could be a better time than to put the Secret Service silliness in its proper legal context. Continue reading
Starting today we plan on posting fact patterns that will give you a chance to challenge your knowledge of labor/employment laws, regulations and strategy. Each will deal with a situation union representatives are likely to encounter at some point and be accompanied by our own FEDSMILL.com answer. Our goal is to put a little more variety into our postings while also giving you some material you can use to train others in your local union. If you disagree with our answers or believe you have even better ones, use the blog space at the end of the particular posting to share your perspective with the rest of us. Immediately below you will find the first Test Yourself.
MSPB and virtually every arbitrator use the 12 so-called Douglas factors to decide whether to mitigate an adverse action penalty. (See a complete list of the Douglas factors at the end of this posting.) It is absolutely vital that union reps assert as many of them as possible when making replies, during grievance meetings, and at arbitrations or MSPB hearings. But it is just as important to know that from time-to-time MSPB recognizes more than the 12 Douglas factors as grounds to mitigate. Here is one such example. Continue reading
Just thought we would share some in-house news we are excited about. FEDSMILL.com has been operating for a little over six months now and thanks to you we have a mailing list of subscribers and others of over 800 folks. Moreover, those 800 readers (and a few others who stumbled on us via Google or Bing) read about 5,000 pages a month. We started this to help union leaders all over the federal government and it seems like we are off to a good start thanks to you.
AFGE just filed its annual LM report revealing that the number of dues paying members rose by almost 9,000 over last year’s report for a total of 289,023 dues paying members. Continue reading
Score another one for all the Sunday church-going Christians in their battle to spend their Sabbath worshiping. This time DOD learned the hard way that it must offer a “reasonable accommodation” to allow employees to practice their religion and when they do not they can pay dearly. In this case more than $25,000 in damages. Continue reading