Posts tagged federal employees
Goldwater Tells Federal Agency to Protect Workers’ Rights from Union Power Grab
January 26, 2023 // The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents more than 150,000 federal employees working in dozens of government agencies, is one of many big labor unions that wants to make it difficult for people to leave and stop paying dues, even though the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws protect workers and prohibit the unions’ money grab. That’s why the Goldwater Institute submitted comment to the Federal Labor Relations Authority last week opposing the National Treasury Employees Union’s request for rules and policy changes that would allow it to prevent its members from leaving the union or stop paying union dues unless they formally opt out within a narrow, annual window of time. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in its landmark Janus decision that the First Amendment protects the freedom to associate—or not to associate—for “expressive purposes.” The Court held that “[n]either an agency fee nor any other payment to the union may be deducted from a nonmember’s wages, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.” And such consent must be proven by “clear and compelling evidence,” a high legal hurdle for government employers.
Legislative staffer unions percolate beyond D.C.
January 26, 2023 // Part of its argument is that the legislative union would violate the separation of powers because it would be overseen by Oregon’s Employment Relations Board, a part of the executive branch. “All of its members are appointed by the governor, so it's controlled by the executive branch, and that subjects the legislature to the executive branch in a specific way,” Freedom Foundation attorney Rebekah Millard told POLITICO.
Union arbitrators are protecting truly awful government employees
October 10, 2022 // Federal personnel challenges go beyond the civil service system. Federal unions are also a big part of the problem. The government was not supposed to operate this way. Congress expressly directed agencies not to tolerate misconduct and to fire poor performers. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 even made these directives “Merit System Principles.” But agencies come nowhere close to upholding these principles. Barely a third of federal employees say their agencies remove employees whose performance is persistently poor. Half report poor performers stay on the job and continue to underperform.
Do arbitrators go easy on federal employees who challenge being fired?
October 4, 2022 // So in the federal sector, if you’re represented by a union, you have an option if your agency tries to fire you. you can appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board what we think of as these standard civil service protections. But you can also file a grievance under your union contract, it’s an either or you can’t do both. But if you choose to, you can file a grievance under the union contract, and your union can bring that instead to an arbitrator. Generally, these are private contractors, they work with the private sector unions, with the private companies with nothing to do with unions, as well as with the the federal workforce, there’s a master roster, maintained by the Federal Mediation Conciliation Service, and the contracts pretty much all say, you’ll get a list of names from this master roster, people strike names to union agency until one guy’s left. That guy then is the arbitrator.
Union deletes document after report shows taxpayer-funded collusion with Biden administration
September 1, 2022 // “This upgraded resource will be an excellent tool for our union to locate non-union employees across the federal government who are rightfully entitled to representation and a voice in their workplace,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin said in the release, which has now been removed. “NFFE specifically requested assistance in identifying the hundreds of thousands of unrepresented government workers, and today OPM delivered on its commitment to promote employee organizing and collective bargaining by rolling out the enhanced database. We are excited to help these federal employees who have not yet joined a union organize in their workplaces and obtain critical rights and benefits through unionizing.”
Federal Employees’ Job Satisfaction Surged Under Trump, Slips Under Biden, Survey Finds
August 9, 2022 // According to the Office of Management and Budget’s annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, federal employees’ overall satisfaction surged under the administration of then-President Donald Trump, and has already tumbled under the administration of President Joe Biden. Between 2016 and 2020, employees’ overall satisfaction rose by 8 percentage points. Over just the first year of the Biden administration, from 2020 to 2021, federal employees’ overall satisfaction plummeted 5.3 points. Public Service Reform Act, Rep. Chip Roy, Blueprint for Reorganization,
Don’t Expect Unions To Make a Comeback
April 18, 2022 // The biggest problem for unions, it turns out, is that workers are making real progress without them
Legislation Aims to Address Poorly Performing Federal Employees
March 23, 2022 // New legislation aims to restore four Trump era executive orders placing restrictions on unions and making it easier to fire federal employees.
What the Amazon union do-over in Alabama means for the future of retail
February 16, 2022 // U.S. consumers, especially younger ones, harbor new expectations about the workplace that businesses may not be able to ignore.
‘Unions benefit all of us’: new Biden plan encourages federal workers to unionize
February 9, 2022 // Biden said the taskforce’s charge was to identify executive branch policies, practices and programs that could be used “to promote my administration’s policy of support for worker power, worker organizing, and collective bargaining”.