Posts tagged OPM
Biden administration scrubs union accountability site
December 30, 2024 // “Federal union executives have taken advantage of the four years under the Biden administration, which adopted a ‘whole of government’ approach towards promoting and entrenching unions in the federal bureaucracy, to attempt to insulate themselves from a second Trump term,” Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square. As The Center Square previously reported, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has for years updated a website to track union’s “official time.”
Chair Foxx Demands Answers on Biden, Harris Use of Taxpayer Dollars to Boost Government Unions’ Priorities
October 9, 2024 // The total compensation paid to DOL, NLRB, and EEOC employees to negotiate collective bargaining agreements or to work with federal labor unions; Travel and lodging expenses paid or reimbursed to DOL, NLRB, and EEOC employees and union staff in order to negotiate collective bargaining agreements; Expenses paid for retaining experts, factfinders, mediators, and arbitrators relating to collective bargaining agreements or disputes; Cost of administrative support and purchasing supplies—including acquiring technology—to administer collectively bargained agreements; The fair market value of space controlled by the federal agencies provided to labor unions; Expenses paid for “official time;” The number of hours DOL, NLRB, and EEOC employees spend on official time, as well as the number of employees who use official time—particularly those who spend more than 50 percent of their hours on official time; and Penalties levied related to collective bargaining with labor unions, including but not limited to arbitration awards or monetary settlements provided to workers or unions because of unfair labor practices related to collective bargaining.
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.
EXCLUSIVE: House GOP Presses Biden-Harris Admin To Disclose How Tax Dollars Are Funding Union Activism
October 9, 2024 // “The Biden-Harris administration has also covered up the practice of ‘official time,’ which permits federal employees to engage in union activities during work hours instead of focusing on the public service they were hired to do,” the committee’s letter to the Department of Labor reads. “Federal agencies and unions negotiate over issues most taxpayers would consider a waste of time and attention. Examples include the addition of 14 inches in the height of cubicle desk panels, designated smoking areas on an otherwise tobacco-free campus; and federal employees’ right to wear shorts, sweatpants and spandex at work.”
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.
Unions applaud ‘most pro-union president in history’ following Biden’s decision to end campaign
July 24, 2024 // As president, Biden instituted reforms aimed at rebuilding the federal workforce, both increasing recruitment at federal agencies and restoring rights taken away during Trump’s first term in office. Shortly after taking office, he rescinded Schedule F, an abortive—though not abandoned—effort to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees in policy-related jobs into the government’s excepted service, effectively making them at-will employees.
Commerce agency near ‘collapse’ over telework, layoffs, union says
June 3, 2024 // Lawmakers, especially Republicans, have been wary of widespread remote work, saying customer service backlogs at government agencies including the Social Security Administration and the IRS prove the case for more in-person staff. Just last week, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s HR department, assured lawmakers that more than half of all federal employees work in-person full time.
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.”
Biden administration defends decision to nix union accountability effort
March 29, 2024 // Now, in its letter to lawmakers, OPM points out it has moved the official time data to an “agency reports” webpage. However, the last official time report on the site is from fiscal year 2019, meaning none have been completed since Biden took office. No other official time reports are listed on the OPM reports page. “Most tellingly, Director [Kiran] Ahuja offered no apology for the removal of the official time webpage, made no commitment to restoring it, and declined to commit OPM to producing any additional estimates of taxpayer-funded union time use and costs in the future…” Maxford Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square.
Biden admin silent as federal accountability site for union work remains missing
March 13, 2024 // OPM had altered its federal database to make it easier for unions to target and recruit employees not supporting the union. “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.”