Finally, someone heard the complaints of so many local union leaders who by law must run local elections every two or three years. Those of us who have been through it know the drill: printing ballots, updating member home addresses, buying envelops & stamps, securing a mail box, assembling a committee to count ballots, securing the records, etc. Well, it looks like that is about to be history. Continue reading
Featherbedding is a widely condemned practice in labor-management circles. At best, it is wasteful; at worst, it is dishonest; and, at present, it appears that the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) is mired in it. The cost to the rest of us is that the Panel produces fewer decisions and each takes longer to issue. Continue reading
OPM Director John Berry must be filled with contempt for bilingual federal employees. Or maybe the Obama appointee is just a hand puppet being worked by others with contempt for them. Or maybe he does not believe they deserve equal rights. Otherwise, how do you explain how poorly he treats bilinguals? See if you can figure it out. Continue reading
STEWARD ALERT! The right to be paid for all the hours we work is about as fundamental right as employees have and not far behind that is the right to be paid at an overtime rate when we are asked to work more than the basic work week or day. Consequently, all union representatives need at least a working knowledge of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and FEDSMILL.com has found a couple of places to get that. Continue reading
STEWARD ALERT! As explained in FEDSMILL’s recent four-part series on how to grieve promotion decisions, one way is to challenge the promotion scores. A large part of those scores often comes from an interview. This article reviews the 10 errors stewards should look for in any promotion interview. Continue reading
MEMBER ALERT! Employers get zillions of hours of work each year from employees who access their e-mail account on their own time to either answer e-mails, clear backlogs or just link up related messages for easier processing during the work day. Virtually none of the employers are paying for that work and some even boldly require that employees read certain e-mails before they start their compensated work hours. Well, the Labor Department has moved to put an end to the refusal to compensate employees for their on-line, off-duty work. Continue reading