25 MANAGEMENT ACTIONS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES COMMONLY GRIEVE
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.
- Denial of a fair share of the available overtime
- Improper payment for overtime worked
- Incorrect performance appraisal scores
- Denial of performance awards
- Incorrect performance award amounts
- Unjust ratings/rankings for promotions
- Delayed career ladder promotions
- Denial of a requested reassignment
- Involuntary reassignments
- Unfair distribution of work by a supervisor
- Denial of leave, e.g., annual, sick, FMLA, etc.
- Secret management records kept on employees
- Harassment by a supervisor
- Unsafe working conditions
- Assignments of higher graded work without higher pay
- Reduction-in-force errors
- Denial of the right to work an alternative or compressed work schedule
- Denial of the right to telework
- Denial of necessary training or even a fair share of discretionary training
- Improper discipline
- AWOL charges
- Assignment to a preferred shift
- Civil rights discrimination, e.g., race, gender, age, national origin, disability, etc.
- Denial of religious accommodations
- Inadequate reimbursement for travel expenses
When employees win their grievances, which often happens without the union taking the case to an outside neutral arbitrator, management can be required to give the employee a near limitless list of corrective actions, e.g., give an employee a job, assignment, shift, financial benefit, etc. If you have been treated unfairly in connection with any of these 25 items or even related workplace decisions, sit down with a union steward to see what can be done. Often, they can get things fixed informally through their relationships with executives, HR and managers without a complaint even becoming formal.
Thank you! Bless you! At the Local level we have very little access to practical resources. I compiled a 100+ page loose-leaf steward manual from various trainings I had attended over a decade so that stewards could quickly look things up in one place. I wish our council would make something like that available on their website so any steward could quickly put together a demand to bargain or a ULP or a grievance instead of calling on our overworked officers to do their jobs. Keep up the wonderful work. As you know, I’ve previously sent out articles of yours in our Local newsletter and I’ll get these “pass me on” articles out to our members ASAP.