PASS ME ON TO UNIT MEMBERS– You may never have filed a grievance challenging a management decision, but thousands of federal employees do each year and many get the corrective action they wanted—whether it be new jobs, back pay, retroactive leave, respect, or something else. Here is a list of the 25 management decisions that federal employees grieve most often. Continue reading
QUESTION: An employee stops her union rep, you, in the cafeteria to report that her manager will no longer let her telework the three days a week she has for the last year. He has limited her to one day a week. When the rep asks her why the manager did this, the employee reports that the manager told her his new third line manager has asked everyone to cut back on telework. The rep went on to check if any of the grounds in the contract for decreasing telework applied and assured himself none did. The employee said she would agree to file a grievance, but only if the remedy was worthwhile. Otherwise, she would prefer to stay on the manager’s good side to see if she can change his mind over time. Which of the following remedies can the union get from an arbitrator for the employee under law?
Although management usually has more power than employees, a union rep with expert knowledge of what law, regulation and contract already entitled employees to and who knows multiple ways to solve the same problem can tame that power substantially. Given that most unions do little to tell its local officers and stewards about developments stemming from cases other than their own union’s work, Fedsmill tries to keep those folks up to date on developments no matter which union or venue generates the developments. Moreover, one of the great failings of the American education system is that it does not spend six seconds over the first 18 years of a citizen’s life educating them on the employment laws, regulations, and practices that will control the next 50 or so years they will spend in the work force. In contrast, hours are spent on such “vital” life skills as the Peloponnesian War, … Continue reading
Kudos to the Dept. of Agriculture executive who took on the bogus promotion selection system at Agriculture and won big. She filed an (EEO) complaint alleging that she was discriminated against based on her gender when from 2010 to the present Agriculture failed to pay her at a level similar to a male employee performing similar work. She claimed that violated the Equal Pay Act (EPA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In May 2010, the Agency offered the Complainant the position of Associate Chief Information Officer (ACIO), at a starting salary of $159,416, lower than her male predecessor’s starting salary of $172,200 in 2008. HR tried to explain this away by claiming that the Complainant and her male comparator were hired by different people and therefore there was no intent to discriminate. Sounds hugely bogus to us, but EEOC slapped Agriculture’s argument down by pointing out that. . . Continue reading
Not long ago a major federal sector union issued a press release about the impact of Trump’s looming anti-federal employee personnel regulations. This was its lead sentence. “The Office of Personnel Management today took another step toward dismantling due process rights for public-sector workers in the federal government.” There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it misses an opportunity to remind Americans just who these anti-employee proposals are going to hurt. It seems to us that a better lead for any union press release focused on Trump’s revenge against federal employee and their unions should read like this. “The Office of Personnel Management today took another step toward dismantling due process rights for the largest group of military veterans and disabled employees in the country—federal employees.” Unions are fighting with at least one arm tied behind their own back by ignoring the benefit of actively allying with organizations representing veteran and disabled employees. They should be proud of feds having not only the most diverse workforce of any sizable employer in the country, but also of being the primary employer of veterans and the disabled.
A recent FLRA decision opens with these three sentences, “In this case, Arbitrator Anthony R. Orman, found that the Agency violated Article 21, Section 4 of the parties’ collective-bargaining agreement by failing to distribute overtime in a “fair and equitable manner.”[ But he denied the Union’s requested backpay remedy because the Union failed to show which employees were available and would have accepted the opportunity to work the overtime. We find that the Arbitrator’s denial of backpay is not contrary to the Back Pay Act (BPA). Continue reading
Because the collective bargaining agreement characterized the grievance process as designed to provide for the “prompt” settlement of grievances, an arbitrator decided to void the union’s grievance on behalf of a removed employee as not promptly processed. The reference to “prompt” efforts appears in dozens of agreements, and this case signals that more unions are going to lose the grievance entirely when they invoke arbitration, but then take months and years to request an arbitration panel, schedule a hearing date, file post-hearing briefs. Moreover, a Court of Appeals case gives agencies even more reason to punish foot-dragging unions. Continue reading