The Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) has posted several videos on its YouTube page that union reps will find helpful to understanding the larger arena of federal personnel law. We recommend the following:
You can find the rest of the training videos on this page.
A case just came out of FEMA that further shakes our faith in the competence of agency leaders. When an employee got pregnant, her supervisor called her in to explain how she would now have to change how she and her husband “interacted” in the bedroom. (He was much more graphic than us.) Once she delivered and returned to work, the supervisor watched for her to leave for the nursing room and as soon as she was gone he went to her desk and commented to anyone near-by about her disappearance. Not crazy enough yet? Well, after the birth the supervisor started calling her “mom” rather than by her name. That was followed by asking the employee when she was going home to China (even though she was a USA citizen) and referring to her Chinese co-workers as “Ching-Chang” and “Dang-Lang.” Want even more crazy? The supervisor also made it clear he did not agree with deleting names of Confederate leaders from schools. Apparently, he thought that was un-American and that that needed to be said to the minorities in the office. So, what did top management do about all this? Continue reading
That’s right. We have been hit with what amounts to a “gag order.” We have been posting Fedsmill pieces for almost 13 years trying to make sure union reps get information that their own union might not publicize, e.g., about casess other unions win. But for the first time in those 13 years a national union is censoring any e-mail alert from Fedsmill to its national staff. That union’s staffers will not get timely alerted to new legal precedents that their management counterparts, who read our pages, get. Moreover, by making it harder for staff to get information they use in their jobs, the change is likely a ULP if implemented unilaterally. We are not going to reveal which union it is, although the information may seep out from other sources. But what we will do is eliminate over a dozen of the national unions that represent federal employees to make your analysis easier. See the list below. Continue reading
A Filipino CBP Officer in the agency’s El Paso Office applied for a job as a CBP Officer (Field Canine Enforcement Trainer) back in 2016, was rejected and filed a race discrimination charge with EEOC. When it came time to look at the selection evidence file, the agency announced it has “lost” the (1) selection panel ratings of applicants’ resumes; (2) a list compiling the selection panel data into a numerical list of scores; and (3) the application materials for applicants other than Complainant and the two selected candidates. When EEOC asked the Port Director and Assistant Port Director how they made the selection, they said they could not recall—the old Watergate defense—but did swear the complaining employee was in the bottom half of the ranked candidates. Apparently, fractions stuck with them longer than other kinds of memories. That left EEOC to take their word that they did the right thing. EEOC chose not to believe them because … Continue reading
Remember the old movie line, “Every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings?” Well, it came to mind this morning as I thought about those times when union presidents get a hormone rush or adequacy-anxiety attack and terminate staffers for any reason other than a capital offense. It effectively gives federal agency LR shops a wonderful gift—or what you might think of as a special set of wings. If the staffer has been around the union long enough, it is often a million-dollar gift. Here is what union leaders hand over to agencies. Continue reading
The “NY Times” recently posted a story about an employee fired for being late 47 times over 10 months. It highlights one way a union can defend a member disciplined for AWOL no matter what the employee’s civil rights protected class. We recommend you read, “She Said Equinox Fired Her for Being a Black Woman. A Jury Agreed.” Then demand the data you need the next time you are involved in an AWOL case.
National union leaders seem to have a tendency to see the world as black or white. They refuse to recognize the world’s gray despite the fact that unions are all about pointing out to agency management the foggy gray areas when it proposes to terminate a member. As a result, top union leaders often terminate non-unit staffers unprotected by collective bargaining agreements when something far less punitive would do the job. Although the extreme extermination option makes them feel morally superior to others and even gives them a rise, here is how they are hurting their union: Continue reading
Imagine a team of agency IT people spent years and over $1,000,000. developing software to solve a big agency problem no private vender could and that it worked like a charm. But one day someone in management noticed that it made a serious mistake once on one of the many tasks it was written to handle. Would the proper top management response be (a) to pull the software, destroy it as a lost cause, and write off the million dollars invested in it or (b) to shut down the software’s work in one area and continue to benefit from everything else it can do? Continue reading
That’s right, even though the staffers at Fedsmill consider themselves to be diehard supporters of unions, we must call a foul when we see top union leaders behave so miserably toward a group of their employees. Every federal employee who completes a probationary or trial period is entitled to challenge an agency’s decision to fire him or her to a hearing before a third party neutral. Moreover, this neutral can not only order the terminated employee reinstated, but in certain cases give money damages beyond any back pay entitlement and order the agency to consider discipline the agency manager who imposed the termination. Additionally, even those employees no longer in the bargaining unit, namely those who became managers or confidential employees are entitled to due process before being fired. Finally, as best as I can tell the non-supervisory staff of every federal employee union has formed their own union and have the right to challenge any disciplinary action to arbitration. That leaves only one group of employees on the staff of these unions or among the people they represent who are totally exposed to unfair, arbitrary, capricious and retaliatory terminations without an opportunity to challenge. I am talking about… Continue reading
Probably not? But EEOC deserves high marks for all the effort it is making to get the word out there. What is its message? One, Federal agencies are starting to use Artificial Intelligence software to make promotion selections, discipline, and other major personnel decisions. Two, … Continue reading