Posts tagged Government Accountability Office
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.”
GAO union employees keep flexible work options in new contract
September 22, 2023 // Under the contract, which serves as an addendum to the full collective bargaining agreement, employees approved for routine telework are required to report onsite a minimum of four times per month. Under the hybrid option, workers may only report as needed depending on their job tasks, and others still may work fully remotely.
Opinion: Free Raises for Everybody. Not.
August 17, 2023 // One obvious result will be higher costs on public works and probably fewer of them since federal dollars won’t go as far. States and localities may have to borrow more and raise taxes to fund projects. Fewer semiconductor fabs and renewable projects will probably be built since private capital won’t go as far. Another result will be less private investment, especially in housing, since contractors will have to increase wages to compete for workers with federally funded projects that must pay the prevailing wage. The rule will also reduce the competitive advantage of right-to-work states by raising the wages their contractors have to pay.
Blame America’s Air Traffic Control System for Your Flight Delay
March 16, 2023 // A Government Accountability Office study found that in countries that privatized, there are fewer delays and costs are lower. So why doesn't America privatize? Because our politicians get money from labor unions, who "advocate for keeping the same people in the same jobs," says Furchtgott-Roth. Another opponent is the private plane lobby. Under our current system, Congress makes sure that the big airlines, which you fly, subsidize private flights' air traffic fees.
BLM employees unionize amid change, uncertainty
October 12, 2022 // Hundreds of Bureau of Land Management staffers have voted to join the National Treasury Employees Union, partly in response to the Trump-era relocation of the bureau’s Washington headquarters and the movement of hundreds of D.C. jobs to the West. The decisions by about 200 non-supervisory headquarters employees in May, and another roughly 200 in the New Mexico state office in February and in the Taos and Rio Puerco field offices there last spring, were also spurred by the Biden administration’s efforts to undo the Trump BLM reorganization. They likely will not be the last bureau employees to join the union, NTEU President Tony Reardon said. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland,
Unemployment system plagued by delays, fraud and racial gaps during pandemic, says watchdog agency
June 9, 2022 // The nation’s unemployment system suffered multiple failures during the Covid-19 pandemic, including delayed payments, elevated fraud and “substantial” disparities in receipt of benefits along racial and ethnic lines, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in two reports issued Tuesday. The GAO on Tuesday also added unemployment insurance to its “high-risk list,” which outlines programs and operations vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement, or in need of transformation. UI system, joblessness, Great Depression, self-employed, gig workers, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, PUA, stolen identities, Rep. Richard Neal, federalizing unemployment benefits, benefit administration, modernizing computer systems