As negotiated agreements expire and bargaining appears likely, it is vital for an Agency to take stock of the old contract and assess where it wants negotiations to go. You can be sure the union will come to the table with an agenda; the author asks whether Agency representatives have an agenda of their own and attempts to lay out a framework for development of management’s agenda.
At least 85 nurses in the VA are working as full-time union representatives. Two Senators are questioning the impact on veterans of federal employees working as full-time union representatives.
In an op-ed, Congressman Dennis Ross (R-FL) says that taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for union activities in the federal government and that federal employees should pay for it themselves.
The federal government currently pays salaries of employees who spend time representing unions. Legislation has been introduced to eliminate this practice.
AFGE has scheduled a number of meetings at resorts and a national conference with discounted Disney tickets in Orlando Florida in September. How many attendees will be on official time and government paid travel and per diem is anyone’s guess. The author suggests that for every day a union representative spends at this conference, up to three might not have to be furloughed. Does this affect your pay?
FLRA is not deciding any cases as they are missing two members. If the former Chair is reconfirmed, we can expect more union proposals to be offered and ordered negotiable as “appropriate arrangements” for violating a management statutory right. The Author recently covered this topic at the Society of Federal Labor and Employee Relations Professionals’ annual conference. This article offers the meat of that presentation and suggestions for dealing with FLRA on this issue.
The VA has 250 employees working for unions full-time. Overall, government spent about $156 million in 2011 on salaries for federal employees who only work for federal employee unions.
Have you ever listened to someone give a presentation or state a particular view and leave out a critical piece of information? The Author suggests that perhaps FLRA’s General Counsel’s bias was showing in a recent presentation on Furloughs and Agencies need to take it with a big block of salt.
