QUESTION: What happens when a union refuses to ratify a term agreement partially based on an order from the Panel? Can the agency just turn around and ask the Panel to impose the entire contract, including those issues the parties had agreed upon before going to the Panel? If so, doesn’t that just mean that a decision not to ratify will merely delay implementation of the same agreement a couple of months? Continue reading
The Panel does not publicize its decisions over whether or not to take jurisdiction, but they are very important to the LR community nonetheless. In the case of Patent and Trademark Office and POPA, 20 FSIP 045 (June 2020) we see yet another instance of the union outmaneuvering the agency so as to block FSIP from putting one more collective bargaining agreement through its mean-spirited, anti-union meat-grinder. Knowing how to block the Panel from taking jurisdiction may be the most important skill a union negotiator can have these days as the Administration looks to crush unions. (Similarly, knowing how to avoid jurisdiction pitfalls is just as critical a skill for agency negotiators, as the PTO management team proved so convincingly in this case.) Fedsmill.com has posted many pieces on what blocks FSIP from taking a case that go into issues not involved in this PTO-POPA case. Among them are the following:
Just type in FSIP to the Fedsmill.com search box if you want to see them all. Here is how the union blocked the Patent and Trademark Office management from getting FSIP’s union-hating help. Continue reading
This continues the self-assessment of your knowledge of prohibited personnel practices. Read through the hypothetical situations provided under each PPP and decide what you think. The correct responses are posted below the quiz questions. Continue reading
It has been a long time since we have run across as despicable a federal manager as the one at an HHS office there. When an employee, a clinical pharmacist, filed an EEO complaint back in 2017, her third line manager apparently lost his mind. He blocked her from getting a retention bonus she had been earned and that she was recommended for by two lines of management, threatened her with disciplinary action and demotion, tripled the number of reviews of her work, made her back off a proposed termination of an employee for a mistake that threatened patients’ lives, and then required the EEO complainant, Jacquetta, give the near-terminated employee a perfect rating. Continue reading
On July 5, 2013, a VA Doctor filed a formal EEO complaint claiming that the VA discriminated against him based on race, national origin (Middle Eastern), religion (Muslim), and in reprisal for prior protected EEO activity. The employee was terminated about 3 months later during his probationary period. The EEOC found Veteran Affairs guilty in all but one cited incidence and ordered the doctored be reinstated with back pay or given “front pay.” (When an agency does not want to (or cannot) rehire the employee, EEOC orders the agency to pay the employee a salary anyway until his subsequent job equals or exceeds his federal salary. This is called front pay.) This probationer was given substantially more than $3 million in back and front pay along with damages. Check out Terrence H., v. Robert Wilkie, Sec’t’y, DVAs, EEOC No. 2019005811 (2020) for details. This is a good case to show a probationer who thinks s/he has no way of pushing back against an agency when treated unfairly.
An arbitrator found that the agency violated the Rehabilitation Act and the agreement by denying the grievant a reasonable accommodation. As remedy, he directed the agency to grant the grievant a telework schedule, and awarded $30,000 in compensatory damages for the Rehabilitation Act violation. The FLRA upheld the award by dismissing two agency claims,i.e., 1) the arbitrator didn’t account for the grievant’s partial responsibility for delaying the interactive process; and 2) the amount of compensatory damages didn’t account for the time during which the grievant was responsible for delays in the process. The FLRA explained that under the Rehabilitation Act, failing to make a good-faith effort to accommodate a qualified, disabled employee exposes an agency to liability for compensatory damages. AND THAT IS WHY A GRIEVANCE SHOULD NOT ONLY ALLEGE A CONTRACT VIOLATION, BUT ALSO AN EEO VIOLATION. Without the EEO allegation the employee would not have been entitled to the $30,000.00 in compensatory damages. for more details, check out DoD, DLA and AFGE, local 1992, 71 FLRA 729 (2020)
We are passing along an article from MarketWatch that has ideas to help employees who do not want to be ordered back into the workplace. While it is advice for private sector employees and their union, most of the ideas apply in the federal sector as well. This is an issue unions had better bone up on because it will dominate the next couple of months.
Just thought we would let you know that charges were filed against Kiko and Abbott, Trump’s political operatives at the FLRA over their very deliberate and deceptive misrepresentation of a Supreme Court decision. We fully support the idea because what they did may be the most reprehensible act of any FLRA members, which includes a long string of anti-union zealots. We will keep you posted on what happens next to the extent we know. Of course, the bar associations to which they belong may decide not to address the facts, find them innocent, or decide that substantively changing the words of a Supreme Court precedent to mislead the thousands of non-lawyers who fell in line with the now disgraced FLRA decision is not a big deal. But wouldn’t it be swell if someone in this Administration is held accountable for malicious behavior? For more background on this check out this Fedsmill.com posting: https://fedsmill.com/barcharge7565-2#more-7565
All employees do not have equal legal rights. Union representatives have far more rights than most. In fact, they have far more rights than the average manager. So, if you hear anyone asking the question, “What Can the Union Do for Me?” here is just a short list of the powers a union rep can put to work for employees the minute a union is certified in an election. Continue reading
Someday in the future fairness, reason, civil rights, and professional neutrality will once again be the values driving White House (WH) decisions as opposed to vengeance, greed, racism, and bullying. And when that day comes, federal sector unions had better be prepared to not only push for labor law changes, but push in the right direction. Sadly, if history is any guide, even a Trumpless WH will try to co-opt labor by dangling some shiny new labor-management scheme that it promises will deliver employees and their unions to the bountiful gardens of LMR nirvana, e.g., partnership, forums, pre-decisional involvement, etc. Some 22-year old campaign worker recently elevated to shaping White House labor policy—but who never belonged to a union or represented employees– will probably coin an expression like “Futurating Our Workplace” as part of its marketing plan. We have seen unions fall for this mindless WH drivel repeatedly in the last 30 years, and we are watching labor pay a horrible price for it now. If unions are to have any chance of resisting a useless WH offering, they need to begin working now on a plan that has them all committed to demanding nothing less than bolstering traditional collective bargaining. They cannot afford to settle again for a hollow LR tweak, getting invited to lame White House parties, and having the personal cell phone numbers of people who work there. While those things might be important to a union’s legislative staff, they are just cheap, shameful bribes that keep the union’s collective bargaining program weak and vulnerable. So, we thought we would get the discussion going now by listing the changes labor must insist be adopted one way or the other. Today’s post addresses three of about a dozen changes needed that we will focus on in the coming weeks. Continue reading