Posts tagged Department of Veterans Affairs
Report Shows Extent of Tax Dollars Spent on Public-Sector Unionism
January 17, 2025 // The results of the 2024 presidential election were a repudiation of Biden’s “most pro-union administration in American history,” in favor of one that sides with actual workers, as opposed to union bosses. Congress has every right to demand oversight over the expenses of the executive branch, especially when taxpayer dollars are funneled to union bureaucrats that are working in the interests of themselves and not the American people.
(I4AW) Report Shows Extent of Tax Dollars Spent on Public-Sector Unionism
January 17, 2025 // After the last official report was compiled in 2019, the OPM stopped reporting the hours and costs involved in union-related “official time” despite repeated calls from House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx for President Trump’s 2018 Executive Order to be honored. Pushback continued in 2023 when Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) directed a letter to the OPM querying why the website reporting page went missing in July of that year, only to be told the site was undergoing “maintenance”. In March of last year, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced legislation entitled the Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Transparency Act which called on a return to reporting on the part of the OPM regarding time spent on collective bargaining. In August, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill entitled the No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act to curtail union activities by federal employees during work hours. All these attempts to increase transparency for taxpayers were roadblocked by Democrats in Congress and even now, the site still has not re-emerged – making I4AW’s report even more critical.
Proposed federal pay adjustment could boost wages for thousands of blue-collar feds
October 9, 2024 // Geographically, based on the proposal, OPM’s regulations would give federal pay increases mainly to FWS employees working in Alabama, California, Maine, Maryland and Pennsylvania. In particular, the proposed regulations would most prominently impact federal employees working at three major military installations: Tobyhanna, Letterkenny and Anniston Army Depots. The challenges leading to the persistent federal pay disparities are two-fold. In some cases, there are differences between blue-collar FWS employees and white-collar GS employees. In other cases, there are pay disparities among FWS employees working within the same wage area, OPM explained.
Unpacking Kamala Harris’ record on federal workforce issues
July 26, 2024 // As vice president, Harris led a White House task force that made recommendations for how agencies could reduce barriers for public and private sector workers to organize or join a union. In the year after agencies began implementing these recommendations, the number of federal employees who are dues paying members of a union increased by 20%. “We are fighting to protect the sacred right to organize. We are protecting the sacred right to organize because we know when unions are strong, America is strong,” Harris said at a Service Employees International Union convention in May.
Commentary: Pushing Back on Deference
June 20, 2024 // Limiting Chevron may also enhance regulatory certainty. Currently, an agency’s reasonable interpretation of a statute can shift from one administration to another. Requiring Congress to be more explicit and shifting statutory interpretation from agencies back to the courts will alleviate that uncertainty. Reversing or modifying Chevron will be key to restraining the ever-expanding administrative state. Even in health care, regulatory priorities should be set by Congress, not bureaucrats. And courts, not agencies, should be the ultimate interpreters of statutes.
Op-Ed: Many federal public union employees remain AWOL
May 28, 2024 // "I'll get these people back to work if I have to send in troops to get them." – Joe Biden In response to Biden's plans to end "federal work at home offices" last week, the White House Office of Management issued a time sensitive guidance for agencies to “substantially increase productive in-person work at Federal offices, particularly at headquarters and their equivalents.” Biden's mandate went over like a lead balloon with federal unionized employees who were told that Biden's harsh decree to return to work possibly violated their union contract.
How much time do federal bureaucrats spend working for unions?
April 6, 2024 // As an example of how the administration was already pursuing such policies, the report boasted of how Biden had “restored” official time at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The upshot: The more than 400 medical staff Trump had returned to their actual federal jobs could once again spend their workday on union activism rather than caring for the nation’s veterans. In a March 2023 update, the task force “proudly announced” the unionization of 80,000 more federal employees, purportedly due to the administration’s pro-union strategies. And earlier this month, Biden issued still another order directing federal agencies to establish “labor-management forums” at which agency leaders will engage in “pre-decisional” consultation with union officials over “workplace matters” and discuss how to “promote satisfactory labor relations.”
COLORADO: Stephen Varela investigated for alleged misuse of union funds
February 23, 2024 // When Stephen Varela became president in 2016 of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2430 in southern Colorado, former union officers say one of the first things he did was ask the bank for a debit card for the union’s account. Local 2430, a union representing U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs employees, explicitly states in its bylaws that its president and treasurer must both sign checks covering any union expenditures. That way there can be oversight of union money and how it’s spent. Debit cards are not normally allowed.
VA, AFGE reach ‘historic’ settlement to reinstate, compensate thousands of wrongfully fired feds
August 4, 2023 // The department said it expects the total cost of the settlement agreement with AFGE to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The exact amount, though, could take years to determine, depending on how many former employees ultimately choose to return to their VA jobs. The settlement comes years after AFGE, which represents more than 291,000 VA employees, filed a grievance against the department in 2018. The union said the agency’s implementation of the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which aimed to speed up the firing process for poor-performing VA employees, violated their collective bargaining agreement.
NSF announces return-to-office changes before finishing negotiations, drawing union ire
July 18, 2023 // Starting in October, all telework-eligible NSF employees and Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) employees stationed at agency headquarters will have to work in the office at least four days per two-week pay period, NSF leaders said in an all-staff email, obtained by Federal News Network. The changes do not apply to employees eligible for remote work or those with an approved remote work agreement. “We want to strengthen the NSF culture by increasing our time in person, while meeting our business needs and maintaining workplace flexibility,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan and Chief Operating Officer Karen Marrongelle said in the email.