The author says that much has been written about the number of hours of official time used by the government, but from the perspective of Congress, OPM and others. She instead suggests looking at the subject from the perspective of federal employees in the workplace.
One of Lois Lerner’s emails that was recently uncovered in the ongoing IRS investigation details how the union prevented disciplinary action from being taken on a non-performing but highly paid IRS employee. The revelation has the House Subcommittee on Oversight concerned about the value the IRS is getting for what it spends on union activity.
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A House Committee chairman has released information from the IRS showing how much time agency employees were spending on official time.
A bill has been introduced to restrict the use of paid time by federal employee union representatives who are performing duties on behalf of a union.
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.
The federal government currently pays salaries of employees who spend time representing unions. Legislation has been introduced to eliminate this practice.
The author raises some questions about the validity of this year’s official time report.
The author says an AFGE official time proposal fails to address accountability or tracking of the time.
In another dispute involving the union’s use of official time, FLRA backed off a stance taken in previous decision, reminding all of us again how important union institutional issues are to Federal unions and their friends among the “neutrals”. The author suggests that employee working conditions’ improvements take a back seat to union institutional issues again and that FLRA’s reversal is part of the politics of labor relations and clearly not part of the the law.
