Posted on April 22, 2022 by AdminUN

BIRTHDAY PARTIES AND PANIC ATTACKS

Although the jury’s decision already has received wide publicity, it is such an interesting case that we thought we would make sure none of our readers missed it.  It seems management forced an employee to attend a birthday party it threw for him despite his request that they not do so.  While there, he had a panic attack that scared and offended some co-workers.  Management sent him home for the rest of the week to recover and when he returned to the job, it fired him on the grounds that his unpredictability made him a threat to the staff.  Most union reps would know enough to challenge that as an unjust termination, but did you also see the potential EEO disability discrimination issue.  The employee’s lawyer did, and filed an EEO charge.  When the case got to court, he not only got his job back, but the jury put an additional $450,000 in his pocket to compensate him for the damage done his mental and physical health as well as his reputation.  If the union had only grieved this as an unjust termination the employee would not have qualified for any of the $450,000.  Cases like this highlight the value of looking for the EEO angle in every grievance.

Posted in Disability, Reasonable Accommodations | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 18, 2022 by AdminUN

GRIEVANCE STRATEGY ISSUES- Part 5 (Remedies)

We are back with Part 5 of our Grievance Strategy series that aims to give union reps a deep look at how to deal with the six most critical parts of a union grievance. As with the four previous editions (See the URL links below), let’s start with an example of a grievance situation.  Imagine that a big promotion decision was announced yesterday and this morning one of the union’s members, Joe Hill, asked you to file a grievance on his behalf.  He points out that he knows he was on the seven-person Best Qualified list #21-09, but was never interviewed despite the contract provision (Article 13, Section 5 Ranking and Selection Obligations Subsection (B)(3)(d)), requiring that “all those on the BQ list be treated uniformly.” Further imagine that you have charged the agency with not only violating Article 13, Section 5 of the agreement, but also related laws and regulations such as the civil rights acts, the prohibited personnel practices, and CFR requirements. It is now time to describe the remedy you want. Many stewards will ask that the agency re-rank the candidates consistent with law, regulation and the agreement as well as give Joe Hill priority consideration if his ranking changes. A few more will add that Hill and the union should be granted “all other appropriate remedies.” They know that phrase gives the arbitrator the power to impose other corrective actions beyond the re-ranking and priority remedies should further developments in the case show they are needed. But often an arbitrator will not think of what other remedies might be appropriate even when you give her/him the power to do anything appropriate. So, it pays to include that phrase AND to list examples, but not an exhaustive list, of the other remedies that you want the arbitrator to order. Here is what would be on our list and why. Continue reading →

Posted in Grievance/Arbitration, Promotion/Hiring, Remedies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 18, 2022 by AdminUN

MANAGERS SAY THE DARNDEST UNTRUE THINGS UNDER OATH

Bargaining unit employees can be fired, and even criminally prosecuted, for making a false statement on a federal document or under oath. So, it always amazes us that once the employees move into management too many feel free to make up the most unbelievable things. For example, take a recent case out of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which you would think places a very high value on being truthful.  A supervisor submitted all the paperwork to have one of her employees upgraded from a GS-12 spot to a GS-14. She did that because the employee was doing the GS-14 work already and her co-workers all had GS-14 jobs. But then for over a year the higher-level managers and HR folks sat on the request until the first line manager retired and they could kill the request permanently. Apparently unaware employees could file or even win EEOC discrimination cases involving classification matters, the managers got on the witness stand at EEOC and demonstrated that when they speak under oath no one should expect them to be telling the truth. For example, … Continue reading →

Posted in Discipline/Adverse Action, EEO/Discrimination | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 18, 2022 by AdminUN

TERMINATION FOR VOLUNTEERING REVERSED

A law enforcement employee was asked to volunteer to attend a multi-week, off-site training program.  Being the agreeable type, he volunteered.  Somewhere during the training, which involved significant physical activity, he broke two ribs.  Nonetheless, he once again volunteered to go on rather than take sick leave or workers comp. In the end, however, he failed the course.  When he got back to the office, he was notified that the agency was terminating him for a failure to perform—and out the door he went. All this happened back in 2014. He appealed to MSPB, but you might remember that President Trump shut down MSPB given that it was the only agency with the power to punish any Hatch Act violations his White House staff might commit. That worked perfectly for his staff protecting a half-dozen of them from prosecution, but it stranded this law enforcement officer for more than 7 years. However, … Continue reading →

Posted in Discipline/Adverse Action | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 13, 2022 by AdminUN

WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN CBP?

FEDSMILL.com reports on CBP-related cases coming out of the FLRA, FSIP, EEOC, CBCA, MSPB, OSC and a handful of other agencies.  We do not care if the case was won by a union, private attorney or an employee representing herself. Our goal is to make sure that union reps are given the widest possible view of what can be done for their members.  Listed below are ten of our favorite CBP stories out of the more than 60 we have posted. If you already subscribe to FEDSMILL.com, then recommend to a fellow CBP union activist that they subscribe also. All they need do is send an email to fedsmill@gmail.com asking to be put on our mailing list—which we never share with anyone or otherwise use for profit.

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Posted on April 12, 2022 by AdminUN

HOW FLRA SPECTACULARLY BOTCHED A CASE

This was not a common case, but neither was it so unusual as to justify a wall-to-wall brain fry at FLRA. Here are the facts of DoDEA and ACEA, 72 FLRA 720 (2022). 1- FSIP issued a term bargaining decision that the agency refused to send forward for agency head review or implement because it believe four imposed provisions violated law; 2- the union filed a ULP which resulted in the FLRA ruling that because one of the four protested provisions was illegal it had no need to address the other protested provisions and that the parties must return to the bargaining table to complete negotiations over all four disputed proposals, 3- on a union appeal to the federal circuit court the court said it was unpersuaded that the clause FLRA said was non-negotiable was illegal and returned the case to FLRA for further action, e.g., to issue a revised decision, and 4- upon receipt of the case from the court FLRA punted saying it was returning the entire the case to the parties without further decision. If you are asking yourself why the FLRA never addressed the other three FSIP-imposed provisions so that the parties knew whether they were negotiable or not when they returned to the table, so are we. Here’s why that was really foolish. Continue reading →

Posted in FLRA, Negotiability | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 12, 2022 by AdminUN

HOW THE AMAZON WORKERS BEAT THE UNION BUSTERS

Given that any good a union can do for its members depends on them first organizing and voting in a union, it is vital for union supporters to stay up with the latest ways to win organizing campaigns. We have been collecting stories that include things the union and employees did to beat the management union busters.  Up to now our favorite has been one that described how the organizers targeted each distinct racial group in the work force differently.  For example a NY Times article noted that “to reach African immigrant workers, it brought in food from a local African caterer.” But our new favorite article is entitled, “How Amazon Workers Beat the Union Busters At Their Own Game.”  We recommend it to anyone thinking of organizing a group of employees or even trying to revitalize one of those union locals where less than 10% of the employees pay dues.

Posted in Membership Building, Organizing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 4, 2022 by AdminUN

WHY NEGOTIATE OVER MIDTERM AGENCY CHANGES?

Some unions are very aggressive about demanding to bargain over every management-proposed midterm change while others act like these changes are not worth their time—and we never understood the latter group.  Those unions are missing out on numerous employee and union benefits that come with an aggressive mid-term bargaining program.  So, we thought we would take a minute to highlight what those benefits are.  Maybe this will convince some readers to change the way their own union operates. Check out our post entitled “How to Lose Millions for Members” if you doubt us about an unaggressive union losing millions for members. Continue reading →

Posted in Bargaining | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on April 4, 2022 by AdminUN

HOW TO FIND EEOC DECISIONS

EEOC has redesigned its home page with the result that it is a little more difficult for federal employees to find copies of its decisions.  So, we thought we would save you a few minutes hunting by pointing out that you can find them here.  You might want to bookmark this site for the future.

Posted in EEO/Discrimination | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on March 27, 2022 by AdminUN

EEOC ALLOWS GAY NASA EMPLOYEE TO REASSIGN HIS SUPERVISOR

We pay NASA employees to keep their head in the clouds—in a good way, but how could they have missed that it is against the law to discriminate against gay employees? Standing too close to the rocket fuel fumes? In any event, when a high-level administrator was found to have discriminated against a gay employee, EEOC ordered that the employee be allowed to determine whether the administrator stayed in the same chain of command as he or had to move to a different part of the organization.  Here is how they put their order, followed by a list of the things the administrator did to earn this very unusual penalty. Continue reading →

Posted in Gender/Sex | Tagged | Leave a comment