Posted on December 12, 2023 by AdminUN

RETROACTIVE PAY FOR TEMPORARY PROMOTION & $377,000 MORE

What do you do if your supervisor dumps a bundle of higher graded work on you, but refuses to give you a temporary promotion for doing it? Fight! That’s what you do. The two Trump appointees to the FLRA screwed up feds’ ability to force the agency to pay for the level of work it assigns an employee, but a new case out of EEOC showed how it offers a reasonable path to the money you are owed and more.  In this case an employee was awarded a five-year retroactive promotion with step increases or about $50,000, plus over $137,000 in damages for the emotional harm she suffered and over $233,000 in attorney fees. She proved the agency denied her the promotion due to her race and prior EEO activity. The case is another good reminder why it is important to consider bringing in an EEO allegation when you grieve a contract obligation. For example, …    Continue reading →

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Posted on December 5, 2023 by AdminUN

WHY PROBATIONERS SHOULD JOIN THE UNION

Although the urban rumor is that probationers have no way to challenge an agency when it terminates them, experienced union reps know that is far from the truth.  In fact, we just saw a case out of EEOC where the Commission ordered an employee dismissed during her probationary period reinstated with two years of back pay, interest, retroactive promotions and step increases, and compensatory damages. Over 99% of probationers would have no idea how to challenge an agency’s decision to fire them, which is where the union comes it. The employee in this case was terminated for failing to pass an agency administered test after the agency ignored her request for an accommodation of her learning disability.  For details, check out Alena C. v. Denis R. McDonough, Sec’y, DVA, EEOC No. 2023001110 (2023) Union reps should make sure that all probationers know that not only do they have rights, and that paying union dues can be worlds cheaper than hiring a private attorney to file an EEO claim.

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Posted on December 4, 2023 by AdminUN

IS THIS SEXUAL HARASSMENT INTOLERABLE?

A DoD male supervisor did the following to a female employee: made repeated sexual comments and innuendoes to her, regularly reminded her that he was “watching her,” invited her over to his house when his wife was away, often touched her and at least twice “touched her buttocks.”  Moreover, when her co-workers started harassing her because they thought something was going on between her and the supervisor, he did nothing to discourage that. Nor did he back off when she started having panic attacks and became depressed. A real gem of a guy, but did that meet the legal definition of sexual harassment? Continue reading →

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Posted on November 28, 2023 by AdminUN

NWSEO $500 NEW MEMBER INCENTIVE

Many unions have offered cash incentives for employees to become members and to the members who sign them up. But we have never seen a program like the National Weather Service Employees Organization has in place.  For example, every eligible bargaining unit employee who joins less than one year after their hire date receives a NWSEO dues rebate in the form of a $500 Visa gift card in their welcome packet. If they join after a year of employment, they get $250 and the members who sign these folks up get a $100 certificate per new member. No wonder the union recently had more members than it has ever had. NWSEO has set the standard for determining just how important new members are. Here’s hoping that other unions, especially those sitting on a bundle of surplus cash and investments, follow NWSEO’s lead.

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Posted on November 28, 2023 by AdminUN

FEDSMILL TAKES ON A NEW ROLE

When we started back in 2011 we decided to focus on passing labor relations and EEO information to union reps in all federal sector unions.  But the longer we look at how unions operate, the more we are convinced that it is time to add a third area of emphasis, i.e., union democracy.  Over time ALL organizations develop a bureaucracy and if bureaucracies do one thing it is that they tend to give the top leadership tier of an organization more power at the expense of others’ influence.  That is generally not good.  So, in the future, you can expect to see more stories about dues systems scams, union committee manipulation, election tricks, convention games, finance schemes, and the lack of checks and balances on union presidents’ power. This is not a decision we reached lightly. We could have taken this on anytime in the last 12 years we have been publishing, but it was only recently that saw how pervasive leadership oppression and/or control has become. As always, we will welcome your ideas about issues we should target. 

Posted in Union Administration | 3 Comments

Posted on November 14, 2023 by AdminUN

MENOPAUSE BENEFITS

We are always on the lookout for employee needs that employers can help satisfy.  Here is a good article that can help fed unions pursue some beneficial changes.  It is from Morningstar.com and entitled, “Menopause Benefits Can Keep Women In The Workplace For Longer — And Save Companies Millions Of Dollars.”

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Posted on November 14, 2023 by AdminUN

THE EEOC “SIMILARLY SITUATED” TRAP

There is a truck full to EEOC case law rejecting an employee claims that they were treated differently than co-workers because the co-workers were not “similarly situated.”  That is a different way of saying that because the employee’s situation was not nearly identical to that of the specified co-workers the agency was permitted to treat them differently and less severely. That can scare a lot of employees away from even trying to get help from EEOC, but a new decision highlights that there is a subtle way around it. Continue reading →

Posted in EEO/Discrimination | Tagged | 2 Comments

Posted on November 7, 2023 by AdminUN

USING THE BIBLE AS A HARASSMENT TOOL

EEOC just explained to the Dep’t. of Veteran Affairs how quoting the bible at the workplace can violate an employee’s civil rights. It wrote, “the use of a Bible verse, alone, in the context of condemnation of sexual identity is sufficient to rise to the level of harassment.” In other words, if one or more co-workers are taunting an employee about their sexual orientation and among the taunts is a posted or orally repeated bible quote, then someone likely is about to be disciplined while the agency islikely to be writing the employee a check for the harm done. Continue reading →

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Posted on November 7, 2023 by AdminUN

FOR THOSE NON-BELIEVING NON-MEMBERS

A percentage of your co-workers who refuse to join the union do so because they believe that managers would never be deliberately unfair to them, and even if they were, the “civil service system” would stop them before they did harm.  There are also those among your co-workers who believe in tooth fairies, candy-laden bunnies, and flying red-nosed reindeer. But for now, we want to give you something to pass on to the first group. EEOC just issued a decision in which it found that a couple of managers did this to an employee: Continue reading →

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Posted on November 1, 2023 by AdminUN

WHEN SUPERVISORS VENT, THEY MAY HAVE TO PAY

There are lots of situations inside and outside government where some manager is “miffed” that s/he must respect an employee’s rights under the law and they might walk away muttering to themselves—maybe even kick something.  But where they also use the approval of the employee’s exercise of a right to tell the employee to shape up, they can be liable for paying the employee and dealing with a new set of headaches. For example, in this case, a supervisor issued an employee a memo directly referencing the employee’s requests for official time to work on his EEO complaint.  It explained that he was granted 20 hours of official time, but would not get any more. The supervisor then explained that the employee needed to “immediately improve [his] conduct by following instructions provided to [him] regarding the amount of official time that has already been provided to you . . . .”  Continue reading →

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