CONGRATS TO NATCA ON COLLABORATION
A big tip of our hat to NATCA for developing several videos explaining how its collaboration with the FFA works. If you agency is struggling with the concept, these are a good source of ideas.
DO YOU USE FEDSMILL THESE 5 WAY?
While we welcome those of you who just read our postings, we hope that most of you are squeezing everything out of Fedsmill.com that you can to build a strong labor-management process. Here are just five ways you could use our blog no matter which side of the bargaining table you sit on. Continue reading
WE DO NOT ADVISE DOING THIS, BUT …
Most union reps know that when a manager orders an employee to do something the employee had better do it no matter how wrong the order is. There is a collective bargaining principal called, “Work now, grieve later.” That strongly suggests most arbitrators will punish an employee for not complying when s/he could have filed a grievance and gotten the situation corrected and/or remedied. Even though there are some recognized exceptions to that principal, such as a risk of imminent physical harm to someone, employees take a risk when they count on them. Nonetheless, it happens and if you are representing an employee who did this (or you are the HR specialist advising the manager what to do) there is an old FLRA case where it upheld the employee’s right to refuse to perform uncompensated work that you should read over. Here is how FLRA largely told the story quoting frequently from the arbitration decision. Continue reading
WHAT IF A CO-WORKER GETS YOU FIRED?
Aside from hopefully momentary thoughts of physical revenge in the extreme, the average person may not realize that a childhood fable about a cat and chestnuts figures prominently in the answer. Have you heard of “Cat’s Paw” cases? We hope so because we have written about them before, e.g., “Another ‘Cat’s Paw’ Discrimination Victory.” But if you are new to our group of readers or have the memory retention problems like we have, then a brand new case out of the Court of Appeals is a great refresher and a breath of fresh air that expands an employee’s protection under the “Cat’s Paw” theory. Continue reading
WHEN EMPLOYEES HAVE SEIZURES
Whether a fed’s job involves driving, operating equipment or enforcing the law, seizures create serious, if not life-threatening, risks for the employee, co-workers, employer and public. So, what choice does an employer have when an employee informs it that s/he is having seizures and would like to be moved to a different position indefinitely until s/he can get them under control or given a leave of absence until they are controllable. Assume the employee is newly hired, still in a probationary period, and not yet eligible for FMLA leave. Continue reading
TEST YOURSELF: HOURS OF WORK {Revised}
In this fictional scenario the employees regularly work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. processing on-line applications for federal benefits. Each night the headquarters computer center downloads an inventory of cases to each employee’s on-line inventory, employees work those cases the next day, and return for reassignment any unworked cases. At times, the employees are authorized overtime to catch up with the inventory. This particular week, however, something happened at the computer center that prevented it from downloading the day’s work until 10 a.m. each day. As soon as that was discovered on Monday, the supervisor changed employees’ shifts from the normal one to 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. By Thursday night the computer center emergency was over, everything was back to normal, and the shift for Friday was 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Can the employees ask for overtime pay? If so, for what hours? And what about those employees who had to take leave because they could not stay past 4:30 p.m.? (For this problem, assume that there is nothing in the collective bargaining agreement entitling employees to overtime in this situation?) Continue reading
WHO IS KILLING THE FEDERAL EMPLOYEES’ GOLDEN GOOSE? {Corrected Version}
[Hint: Shakespeare recognized them early as a threat and recommended their immediate execution.] There is a golden goose tucked away in the federal civil service law that entitles federal employees who win back pay for virtually any reason to also have their attorney fees paid. Almost no other group of employees in this country enjoys that benefit for something as simple as winning a grievance that could pay as little as a single hour of overtime pay unjustly denied an employee. Some other Americans can get their attorney fees paid when they overturn their termination, but even that is a tiny percentage of the country’s workers. Considering that MSPB just reimbursed two federal employees’ attorneys $643,000 IN ATTORNEY FEES for overturning their suspensions that cost the employees $36,000 in salary the attorney fee reimbursement provision is truly a harmed employee’s golden goose. Without it, most federal employees would have to just take whatever punishment or mismanagement agency officials handed out because professional representation would bankrupt their families. So, the answer is that lawyers inside and outside government, or at least some of them, are dosing this goose with bills that are likely poisoning it. Continue reading
WHEN UNIONS GET PIGGISH
If you have read Fedsmill.com for a while we hope the message has come through that we are not unquestioning allies of either unions or management. Admittedly, we started out very pro-union, but we were never “my union right or wrong” folks. Then, we hit a big bump in the road and decided that our commitment is to a reasonable, positive and mutually productive system of LMR—not to either party. We think unions have to be just as responsible as they want agencies to be, and we worry a lot about unions that pursue goals that are unquestionably outside the bounds of reasonableness. They are just begging for Congressman Issa and his oft-deranged posse to ride into LMR town and shoot the place up. A brand new AFGE decision makes our point. Continue reading
WHAT IS A GRIEVANCE RECOVERY PERIOD?
The FLRA has said that it “specifically distinguished between contractual back pay recovery periods and contractual time periods for filing grievances.” Consequently, we practitioners had better know the difference, particularly negotiators when they sit down to write a labor agreement. Here are a few comments that we think will help them the most. Continue reading