Posted on January 8, 2026 by AdminUN

OUR PRESIDENT’S RENAMING FRENZY & YOU

If you have not been in the District lately due to some use or lose leave or to treat a year-long migraine, you should know that the President is in the process of a self-loving frenzy renaming lots of the buildings and locations where you work. So, we thought we would look ahead to what is likely to happen next. That should get you ready for when the guys with the gold lettering show up unannounced at your federal worksite to change the name of your work site.  Happy New Year!  Continue reading →

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Posted on January 8, 2026 by AdminUN

DOES FMLA COVER TRAVEL TIME?

Those of us actually engaged in the practice of employee rights accepted long ago that an employee’s time traveling to and from a location where s/he provides covered FMLA assistance is covered as FMLA leave.  President Trump’s staff, however, thought we all needed to hear something from our dear leader’s own people to allow this. Maybe all that dust and flying asbestos from ripping down the east wing confused them enough to think we were just as confused as those White House intellects. In any event, they just issued an opinion letter on the issue. Jeff Nowak, who may be America’s leading thinker about FMLA just posted a piece on his blog addressing the issue.  Even though he writes for employers, we find his advice for union reps as well. So, we suggest you click over to his latest “FMLA Insight” post for some helpful information.

If you know of some employees who have been denied FMLA leave for their travels, now is as good a time as any to contact them and file a grievance.  Given that an agency could be liable for tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees if it forces the union to arbitrate for even an hour of retroactive FMLA leave, these dispute should settle easily.

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Posted on December 30, 2025 by AdminUN

17 UNION-DRIVEN LAWSUITS AGAINST TRUMP’S SELF-LOVING FRENZY

While these days our dear leader is vigorously working through a self-loving marathon by  renaming things in honor of himself, it was not long ago that he was zeroed in on destroying America’s world-renowned professional and neutral civil service. He long ago put out of his mind all the harm he did then to thousands of federal employees and their families as well as to the citizens who relied on the service those feds provide. But his dreams of soon balling away in his newest erection, the Trump Ballroom, will soon be interrupted by favorable decisions in many of the 17 different lawsuits federal unions have filed to overturn his vengeance-driven, anti-fed eruptions. AFGE just posted a wonderful summary of the lawsuits its attorneys and those of other unions have filed. Click here to get a copy and a sense of how much back pay and retro benefits you and/or your co-workers may be in store for. We strongly recommend you read through it to remind yourself that this fight is long, long from over.  More importantly, pass it on to those feds and ex-feds who refused to join your union because they doubted that unions could do anything for them.

Posted in AFGE, Bargaining Law, Compensation, FLRA, Government-wide Regs, RIF, Union Member Rights | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on December 29, 2025 by AdminUN

IS THAT A TRUMP BUMP I SEE?

As the year ends, many unions are filing their annual LM-2 reports outlining their financial situations. One of the most prominent federal employee union to do so, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), is showing a bump as big as Octomom’s. Line 20 of its latest report shows that in comparison to last year’s report it has added about 12,000 new members for about a 14% increase.  WOW!  We would love to attribute it to the superb legal work by the more than 80 lawyers it employs, or the hundreds of dedicated local chapter leaders.  But in fairness the biggest thing that happened to NTEU this year is Trump’s revenge-driven executive order to take collective bargaining rights away from most of the union’s bargaining units.  While I was worried that the EO would be the beginning of the end for NTEU and other unions, it is thrilling to see Trump’s  spiteful order blow up in his face. It appears that it drove thousands of federal employees in only about a dozen agencies to admit that unions, not Trump or his political party posse, have their best interest at the top of their agenda.   Let’s hope this is only the first of many great LM-2 reports.

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Posted on December 16, 2025 by AdminUN

EEOC ORDERS NO CONTACT (AND MORE) AFTER SEXUAL HARASSMENT

An HHS employee, Ileana, alleged that she was sexually harassed by the Agency’s Deputy Director (DD), who touched her leg, rubbed her shoulders, stared at her chest, looked down her blouse, and repeatedly asked her out to lunch and dinner. She maintained that she rebuffed DD’s advances and told him to stop his behavior, but he did not do so. She further alleged that when she rebuffed his advances, DD punished her by assigning her extra duties, refusing her requests for training, assigning her duties outside her position description. Finally, she alleged that DD would often call Complainant into his office to “vent” which often resulted in DD throwing pencils and pens across the room. What did EEOC do about it once it upheld her charges? It imposed an order that included five kinds of remedies. First, … Continue reading →

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Posted on December 15, 2025 by AdminUN

BEING A RESPONSIBLE UNION MEMBER

There is more to it than paying dues and voting in the union election. While it would be great if more folks volunteered to serve as officers or stewards or even to recruit  new members, at a minimum you should know your rights within the union as a member.  These are in addition to any rights in the collective bargaining Agreement with the agency.  The U.S. Dep’t. of Labor posts a great deal of information about union member rights.  Below are just a few of the questions they answer on their website.

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Posted on December 9, 2025 by AdminUN

IRS-NTEU MEMBERS CELEBRATE NEGOTIATED MONETARY AWARDS

Anytime an agency distributes tens of millions for cash awards to its best performing employees is a great time for a celebration. This includes not only one-time cash awards for high performance, but also quality step increases (QSI’s) for the best of the best.  There are also more cash awards for those bilingual employees who voluntarily use their multi-language skills to deal with taxpayers who do not speak English well-enough to work through the arcane terms of tax law.  But maybe the best part of this award process is that the system was established through negotiations after NTEU demanded that bonus money be handed out more objectively. That was about three decades ago when NTEU… Continue reading →

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Posted on December 4, 2025 by AdminUN

MSPB WATERS DOWN THE KALKINES RIGHT

While the Commander-in-Chief is busy redecorating the oval office in a style that can only be described as neo-bordello, his bouncers at the MSPB have been chipping away at the Constitutional rights of federal employees. For longer than most of our readers have been alive the Supreme Court has held that a public employee “…cannot be discharged simply because he invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to respond.”  This is called the Kalkines right after the name of the case it came from. The court spelled out a two-part test that public employees only “subject themselves to dismissal if they refuse to account for their performance of their public trust, after proper proceedings, which do not involve an attempt to coerce them to relinquish their constitutional rights.”   Nonetheless, the MSPB Trumpettes recently added a third element when they upheld the termination of an IRS supervisor (Michelle Shows) who refused to answer a question when being grilled by her supervisor because…   Continue reading →

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Posted on December 4, 2025 by AdminUN

WHAT THE $%#& AFGE?

The D.C Court of Appeals recently issued a decision of  minor significance to all us union advocates.  But it contained “alleged” details about a union leader’s behavior that are so outrageous that it causes me to wonder who is in charge at AFGE. Here is what the federal court wrote to describe what a union member said about her local. Continue reading →

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Posted on October 22, 2025 by AdminUN

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY PROTECTIONS FOR FEDS – RECENT LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS

DOJ is busy trying to legally substantiate paying Trump $230 million for enduring the same process every other suspected and/or indicted citizen endures-but without being paid. But it somehow found a few minutes to address the right of federal employees to situational telework to practice their religion. Click here for a legal memo it issued confirming that feds do have the statutory right to this. It should help when some supervisor reacts from the gut and denies some union member’s request.

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