Posted on July 23, 2021 by AdminUN

EEOC CLAIMS DEMANDING FINGERPRINTS CAN BE RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION

Given that all federal employees must sub it to fingerprinting to get their job, and certainly leave their fingerprints all over the workplace every day, we thought you might be interested in this EEOC press release which we reprint verbatim. We have been unable at post time to identify which religion forbids letting others have your fingerprints. EEOC Sues AscensionPoint Recovery Services for Religious Discrimination. MINNEAPOLIS — AscensionPoint Recovery Services, LLC (APRS), a Minnesota-based estate and probate debt recovery company that manages decedent debt recovery for creditors, violated federal law when it fired a Christian employee instead of accommodating his request not to be fingerprinted due to his religion, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today. Continue reading →

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Posted on July 20, 2021 by AdminUN

EEOC SAYS, “LET THAT DOG WORK”

An employee with a heart condition (atrial fibrillation or Afib) obtained a service dog that could alert her to when an attack was coming. Upon being alerted, she could take medication to avoid another stroke.  She had five before getting the dog. When she asked her employer in June for permission to bring the dog to work with her, she only got a runaround back for the next ten months rather than the reasonable accommodation she wanted.  EEOC found the delay intolerable as well as nothing that suggested the dog would interfere with operations. So, it found a violation of law and ordered the agency not only to allow the dog onto its premises but also to pay the employee compensatory damages. We decided to bring this case to your attention to drive home the point that accommodations for the disabled need not just be devices or schedule changes. For details, check out Thersa E., v. Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General, EEOC Appeal No. 0120182764 (2021)

Posted in Disability, Reasonable Accommodations | Tagged | 1 Comment

Posted on July 19, 2021 by AdminUN

NEW FLRA DECISION SETS A RECORD FOR BLUNDERS

The Authority just issued DoD, DoDEA, Puerto Rico and Antillies Consolidated Education Association, 72 FLRA 414 (2021) which, along with the related prior Court of Appeals decision and other FLRA decision set the unofficial record for the most blunders in a single FLRA case. Those other decisions are DOD, Domestic Dependent Elementary & Secondary Schools, Fort Buchanan, P.R., 71 FLRA 127 (2019) and Antilles Consol. Educ. Ass’n v. FLRA, 977 F.3d 10 (D.C. Cir. 2020). After a brief summary of the case, we are going to list them for the benefit of negotiators who may be facing similar FLRA screw-ups. Continue reading →

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Posted on July 19, 2021 by AdminUN

FMLA OFTEN REQUIRES PERFORMANCE STANDARD ADJUSTMENTS

Often an employer must adjust an employee’s performance standards once it approves the employee’s FMLA leave request.  Not long ago a Federal Circuit Court spelled it out for LR practitioners on both sides of the table. Continue reading →

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Posted on July 7, 2021 by AdminUN

UNION REP TEST #14- (Back Pay Entitlement)

Many grievances are about getting back pay for employees, which makes it very important that practitioners know what can and cannot be done with back pay. Unfortunately, there are a lot of traps in the Back Pay Act (BPA) that can void an otherwise fair grievance settlement and hurt the covered union members deeply. Read through the hypothetical grievance settlement below and then answer the multiple choice question that follows. You can find the answer to the quiz at the end of this post. Continue reading →

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Posted on July 7, 2021 by AdminUN

Part 2- GRIEVANCE STRATEGY ISSUES

Now let’s turn to the common labor agreement requirement that the grievance include “the article(s) and section(s) violated.” Again, this sounds simple and very often is, but there are important exceptions. Continue reading →

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Posted on June 30, 2021 by AdminUN

GRIEVANCE STRATEGY OPTIONS TO CONSIDER  – Part 1

Most labor-management agreements list a few simple items that must be addressed to file a valid grievance, e.g., 1- name of the grievant, 2- agreement article and section violated, 3- date of violation, 4- brief description of the violation, 5- remedy requested, and 6- name and contact number of union rep. So, an inexperienced union rep might think it is therefore easy to draft a grievance, but the experienced rep knows that there are some serious strategy issues to decide under each of those six items.  This is the first in a six-part series that will explain what those strategic issues are. Part I deals with the Name of the Grievant. What is so complex about that you might be asking yourself?  Well, to borrow some famous words from our childhood, “Gather around and you shall hear.” Continue reading →

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Posted on June 22, 2021 by AdminUN

UNION REP TEST#13- (Loss of Status)

Assume that a supervisor gets upset with an employee, who has long had special status in the work group and takes all that away from her.  Up until this run-in with the supervisor, this employee was the acting manager whenever the supervisor was gone, the expert everyone was directed to when they had technical questions, trained all newcomers, given all the public speaking opportunities the group had, and was allowed to pick the most interesting cases to work on rather than have them assigned to her randomly.   What can you do for the employee if the supervisor does not downgrade her? Continue reading →

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Posted on June 22, 2021 by AdminUN

WHAT IF YOU JUST ALERT MANAGEMENT TO AN EEO PROBLEM BUT NEVER FILE A COMPLAINT?

A well-meaning Corrections Supervisor approached the Warden and “… voiced some concerns with…promoting other staff to the acting position and compensating one at the higher grade, but not compensating another employee to serve in an acting role at a higher grade.” A few months later the supervisor approached the same Warden executive saying, “The Associate Warden’s Secretary, African-American female, expressed concerns to me she was being discriminated against as it related to providing relief to the Warden’s Secretary for lunch breaks, leave use, etc.” Just like the first time he talked to the Warden he was told, “not to worry about it.” However, a short time later the supervisor had his supervisory duties taken away. Continue reading →

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Posted on June 17, 2021 by AdminUN

FLRA’S CHURCH LADY EXPOSES HERSELF

The FLRA Chair, Colleen Kiko-Duffy, has made it a point to publicize not just her faith in God, but also her active involvement in her church. So, imagine our surprise when we saw her criticism of the parties to a labor agreement in a recent decision because they did not define what they meant when they wrote that official time could be used in a “reasonable” way. She was incensed because such a subjective term “failed to provide any objective guidance for resolving the dispute,” and that inevitably would lead to “protracted litigation at the public’s expense.” As we read her words, we could almost see her imagining herself atop the Mount fulminating, frothing and beseeching us masses to lead radically better lives—or at least write clearer sentences. But… Continue reading →

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