Posted on October 14, 2011 by AdminUN

WHAT SHOULD FEDSMILL WRITE ABOUT

We have no shortage of ideas to address on this site. But it would be hypocritical to have a motto urging management to respect employee and union insights if we did not do the same. So, we are asking for your suggestions about what information we could deliver that would be most helpful to you.  At the end of this piece there is a place to leave comments. Just enter your suggested topics there and we will start working through them. We cannot guarantee that we will get to all of them or that we have the expertise to deal with each topic, but we would like to try.

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Posted on October 14, 2011 by AdminUN

TEN REASONS TO BE A UNION REPRESENTATIVE

 There are lots of good reasons to be a union rep, whether you get involved in grievances, negotiations, arbitrations, employee meetings, or information gathering & analysis.  Here are ten that we hope lead you to think about getting involved. Continue reading →

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Posted on October 5, 2011 by AdminUN

NTEU WINS $ FOR SIGHT & HEARING IMPAIRED, BUT SHAME ON FLRA

Calling once again on the small army of lawyers it employs, NTEU has won two more Section 508 Rehabilitation Act discrimination cases.  Continue reading →

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Posted on October 5, 2011 by AdminUN

EEOC TO MANAGERS: “ZIP IT!”

Loose lips not only sink ships, but they also violate employee rights.  EEOC issued two decisions recently where it could not have made it clearer that managers are not to talk about employee EEO complaints.  Continue reading →

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Posted on September 30, 2011 by AdminUN

GRIEVING NON-SELECTION FOR PROMOTION (Pt. 4 – Regs)

At this point, the union has built a grievance that levels allegations of contract violations, probably a discrimination charge, and perhaps a ULP.  But there is at least one more claim it can make, i.e., that federal promotion regulations were violated.  There are at least three parts of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) worth examining for violations.  Continue reading →

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Posted on September 29, 2011 by AdminUN

GRIEVING NON-SELECTION FOR PROMOTION (Part 3-ULPs)

Another kind of discrimination management must avoid is anti-union animus or discrimination.  Title 5 USC 7116(a)(2) makes it an unfair labor practice for management “to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization by discrimination in connection with hiring, tenure, promotion, or other conditions of employment.”  Consequently, if there are any reasons to believe that the grievant was not selected because of her union activity the union should charge management with this ULP violation in the grievance.  If the grievant is a union representative, the union should level this charge unless it is certain that it could not be true.  That protects it while it obtains the promotion file and investigates during the grievance. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 28, 2011 by AdminUN

GRIEVING NON-SELECTION FOR PROMOTION (Part 2- EEO)

If the union levels charges of discrimination in a non-selection grievance, it substantially increases its chances of winning.  So great is the advantage that FEDSMILL believes the union should level a discrimination charge in a non-selection grievance unless it is positive it will not help it.  Here’ s why. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 27, 2011 by AdminUN

GRIEVING NON-SELECTION FOR PROMOTION (Part 1)

Ask a manager if you can grieve non-selection from a BQ list and you are likely to hear that you can’t. Some of them will even quote part of a federal regulation that bars grievances over non-selection from a “group of properly ranked and certified candidates.” (5 CFR 335.103(d))  But, there are ways to get around that, e.g., allege that the list was not properly ranked, certified, or considered.  That may sound like hair-splitting, but it gets the union the right to grieve. There are five ways to do that successfully. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 25, 2011 by AdminUN

EDITORIAL – WHAT HAPPENS AT FLRA HAPPY HOURS

How do we know that FLRA is having regular happy hours during the day?  Well, we don’t, but something like that must be happening based on the quality of its particularized need decisions.  They are a mess—and that is the sugarcoated characterization.  While legalists are having a grand old time waxing eloquently about the concept, actual practitioners struggle mightily to unscramble the case law jumble they have given us. By one count, FLRA and its ALJ’s have had to issue over 55 particularized decisions since January 1, 2000, which affirms a state of extreme conceptual turmoil.  Office-wide FLRA inebriation is not the only possible explanation for this; it is just far more polite than others. But, enough of cheap accusations that reveal more about our shortcomings than FLRA’s; let’s look at facts. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 21, 2011 by AdminUN

UNION MEMBERSHIP ACHIEVEMENTS

AFGE, NTEU, and NATCA excel when it comes to membership statistics, but for different reasons. Continue reading →

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