Posted on September 19, 2019 by AdminUN

TRUMP PICKS ON THE DISABLED;  HIS BASE PURGES THEM

Few will forget how our Leader mocked a reporter during the campaign for being disabled.  For those who thought that suggested a man with a low opinion of the disabled, here are some stats to fill out your thinking on his predisposition toward the disabled.  In 2017, the federal government fired 2,626 full-time employees with disabilities, according to documents from the EEOC obtained by NBC News. That marks a 24 percent increase from 2016. There also has been a 20 percent increase since Jan. 1, 2017, in the number of disability discrimination complaints filed by federal employees of cabinet-level agencies, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the EEOC.   The President does not fire or discriminate against these folks himself.  That is done by his appointees, who are drawn from his political base. You can draw your own conclusions, but we also hope union leaders realize that there is a great need for skilled reps among the disabled.  So, get out there and train your stewards in the basics of disability discrimination and try to recruit new stewards from among the disabled. Better yet, open up conversations with the associations representing the disabled.  You both need each other.

Posted in EEO/Disabilities | Tagged | 1 Comment

Posted on September 17, 2019 by AdminUN

CAN FSIP DENY A UNION THE RIGHT TO BARGAIN OVER UNSPECIFIED FUTURE CHANGES?

Not long ago Trump’s Panel ruled that an agency was free to determine the amount of the annual wage increase in each year of the new, multi-year agreement without bargaining with the union. The agency did not have to give the union advance, specific notice of the amount nor bargain over the impact and implementation. Moreover, having given the agency limitless discretion, the union had virtually no way to grieve the figure the agency picked. According to the Panel, the union was to sit there throughout the life of the agreement and take whatever increase the agency deigned to bestow on the employees—or no unit employee increase at all if that is what the agency wanted to do. But, can the Panel do that? Continue reading →

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Posted on September 17, 2019 by AdminUN

THANKS AGAIN AFGE

AFGE’s General Counsel shop has shown, once again, how aggressively it is going to protect federal employees.  When the Office of the Special Counsel put out Hatch Act advice warning feds not to show any support for “resisting” what is going on in this country, AFGE decided to push back and filed a lawsuit. It wants an injunction to stop that kind of intimidation of feds who know better than anyone else the impact on current government operations and effectiveness. After the President ignored the Special Counsel’s finding that KellyAnne Conway repeatedly violated the Hatch Act and should be fired, you would think the Special Counsel would be the last person to warn feds not to exercise all their Constitutional rights.

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Posted on September 17, 2019 by AdminUN

WHY DON’T UNIONS ALLY WITH VETERAN GROUPS?

Unions need all the help they can get these days and one need only look at the President to see how powerless someone can be without allies. So, why aren’t unions leaders knocking on the doors of the various Veterans organization to get their help with federal employee issues? A recent White House report shows that veterans are 31.1 percent of the entire Federal workforce, which includes the 13.3 percent of the workforce who are veterans receiving disability compensation. By comparison, veterans comprise only about 6 percent of the private sector non-agricultural workforce. What more evidence is needed to show that unions and veteran organizations have very substantial overlapping interests? The most fundamental job protections all feds have today came about in the 40s because Congress wanted to protect Vets returning from WW II, e.g., the adverse action due process protections. Somewhere along the line union leaders got cocky and thought they could go it alone.  We now see how foolish  that was. It is time one or more of the national union leader reached out to reestablish this natural alliance because strong collective bargaining rights benefit thousands of vets.

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Posted on September 8, 2019 by AdminUN

THE RIGHT TO SERVICE ANIMALS IN THE WORKPLACE

A well-respected law firm just sent a legal memo out to its clients giving them a good overview of the right of disabled employees to bring service animals to the office or on the job. We recommend it for union reps if only to boost their optimism about helping disabled members. Check it out here.

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Posted on September 8, 2019 by AdminUN

BEING NICE IN NEGOTIATIONS CAN BACKFIRE

The FEDSMILL board member with decades as a union chief negotiator has often explained to the rest of us why the chief spokesperson often needs to “not be nice” to the other side.  In fact, he calls it a critical bargaining leadership skill. Now the Harvard Business Review has published some research making the same point. While we do not want to burst the bubbles of all the interest-based negotiations purists out there, they and all other negotiators would benefit from reading the HBR with the same title as this post.

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Posted on August 18, 2019 by AdminUN

PARENT ATTENDANCE AT SCHOOL IEP COVERED BY FMLA

While OPM is not bound to follow what the Department of Labor says about how to administer the FMLA, it almost always does.  So, now that DOL has said private sector employees can use FMLA to attend these school meetings for their kids, federal employees should feel free to request FMLA leave for the events too.  Check this out for a more detailed posting on the change.

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Posted on August 18, 2019 by AdminUN

THE FUTURE OF OFFICIAL TIME UNDER TRUMP

The Administration and its finger puppets at FSIP are making it nearly impossible for unions to continue agreeing to bank time systems to represent employees.  Ironically, they are also requiring agency executives to put their own necks and awards on the line even if they want to agree to a reasonable bank of time they know with certainty is necessary if it is more than an hour per year per unit employee. Consequently, as a big believer in Newton’s law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, it is virtually certain that unions will adjust their official time tactics to mute, if not mock, Trump’s orders. Here is one path they might take. Continue reading →

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Posted on August 18, 2019 by AdminUN

IMPOSING EXTRA REQUIREMENTS TO APPROVE FMLA LEAVE LIKELY ILLEGAL

A federal judge just shined a spotlight on a problem employees can encounter when they ask for FMLA leave as opposed to other kinds of leave.  The judge said the agency was wrong to add extra notice or similar requirements for a FMLA request that do not apply to a request for annual or sick leave. The decision is not binding on federal agencies, but it should cause unions to question if their members’ agencies require onerous extra notices to get FMLA approved. Check out this law firm’s post about the case.

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Posted on August 4, 2019 by AdminUN

IS BANK TIME ONLY PERMISSIVELY NEGOTIABLE WITH UNIONS?

Union and agency negotiators started creating banks of time for union reps to use because it made a lot of sense for both sides.  Management, for example, no longer had to make countless decisions on what was a reasonable amount of time for each incident the union rep worked on.  Instead of approving a specific amount of time for the rep to draft an information request and another decision to attend a formal meeting and a third decision to interview a potential grievant and a fourth decision to review a notice of proposed change from the agency, management could let the rep manage his/her time against a hard cap. Another advantage was that it permitted unions to have one or two people handle all the union business rather than spreading the workload across maybe a dozen stewards—and thereby forcing a dozen managers into the official time tracking business. Bank time leaves managers the freedom to manage rather than to be glorified official time clerks. But the White House may have screwed that up with its anti-union executive orders putting a ridiculous cap on how much time union reps can have.
Continue reading →

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