AFGE Week in Review (July 14, 2008)

Senate Panel Approves 3.9 Percent Raise for Feds: Following in the House’s footsteps, the Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved a 3.9 percent pay raise for civilian federal employees in 2009. The 3.9 percent hike, urged by AFGE, is identical to the raise approved last month by the House appropriators and is 1 percent higher than the amount proposed by the Bush administration.

Senate Appropriators Join House Colleagues in Banning A-76 Studies Across Government: The Senate Appropriations Committee last week passed a bill that would suspend all new job competitions between federal employees and contractors for one year. The moratorium on job competitions, known as A-76 studies, is part of the 2009 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which would also require agencies to issue and implement guidelines to ensure that federal employees get to compete for new work and work that has been contracted out. The House Appropriations Committee in June passed its version of the bill with identical language called for by AFGE.

OMB, We Have a Problem: Things are so bad with the Bush administration’s competitive sourcing initiative that it needs a new name. The administration is now calling it “commercial services management” and claims it includes things other than A-76. When President Bush took office seven years ago, one of his plans was to review half of the 850,000 federal jobs for outsourcing. But thanks to AFGE, the plan never materialized because Congress is not fooled by the outsourcing plan masked as “job competitions.” Congress over the years has placed several limitations on these A-76 studies after the administration’s savings claims were never confirmed by independent third parties including agency inspector generals and the Government Accountability Office. The biggest blow to the administration came this year when both House and Senate appropriators proposed governmentwide bans on new A-76 studies. Now the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees agencies’ A-76 studies, has decided to sell the bad program of outsourcing by giving it a new name.

Under Pressure from AFGE, VA Compensates Employees for Lost Leave:  It takes the Veterans Affairs Department five years to do what it was supposed to do. In 2003, AFGE won an important victory for federal reservists in Butterbaugh v. Department of Justice.  In that case, the federal court found that civilian employees who participated in reserve military training were unfairly forced to take annual leave or leave without pay to perform their reserve duties. Because federal agencies had allowed 15 calendar days for reserve training, these reservists were charged military leave for nonwork days and had to take personal time off to fulfill their military commitment. As a result of the lawsuit, agencies were required to compensate the reservists for lost leave from 1980 through 2000. The Office of Personnel Management also issued a directive directing agencies to allow 15 workdays for military training instead of 15 calendar days.

Since that decision, however, VA has refused over and over again to provide employees with their proper compensation for the lost leave and has refused to even accept employees’ claims for compensation.  For years, AFGE has put pressure on the agency to do the right thing and give these reservists what they are entitled to.  Finally, in 2008 – five years after the Butterbaugh decision – VA has bent to the pressure and is now providing proper compensation and a streamlined mechanism for getting that compensation. Click on the following link to learn how you can file a claim for your lost leave: http://www.afge.org/index.cfm?fuse=content&contentID=1567

AFGE Wins Overtime Pay for USDA Food Inspectors: AFGE recently won two arbitration cases in which the arbitrators found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Kansas and Iowa violated labor-management contracts when it unilaterally changed the way overtime assignments was made, resulting in lost overtime pay for the food inspectors who were supposed to work overtime. The agency was ordered to pay the two employees – one in Lawrence, Kansas, and the other in Des Moines, Iowa – eight hours and 11.5 hours of overtime respectively. The arbitrators also awarded attorney fees in both cases.

These two recent decisions are consistent with a prior award won by AFGE in Virginia Beach, Va., that similarly resulted in the enforcement of the labor agreement’s weekend overtime provision over any new overtime roster developed to reduce the cost of weekend overtime for the industry subject to food safety inspections.  Several other arbitration decisions are yet pending over this new agency decision to alter the overtime provisions of the contract.

Inside Government: Critical issues facing the Veterans Affairs Department including the need for mandatory funding and additional staff were discussed on a special rebroadcast of AFGE’s radio program “Inside Government” July 11. J. David Cox, AFGE National Secretary-Treasurer and a registered nurse in the VA for 23 years, also discussed the newly formed AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council, of which he is a co-chairman. The Union Veterans Council is designed to bring union veterans together to stand up for the issues that matter most to veterans, their families, and working men and women. AFGE recently launched a major campaign to secure full funding for the VA. To learn more, please visit www.fundtheva.com

Inside Government airs every Friday at 10 a.m. EDT nationwide on www.federalnewsradio.com and 1050 AM in the Washington, D.C., area. The one-hour program discusses issues that impact all federal and D.C. government employees. Programs are archived on the Federal News Radio Web site and can be heard on demand (available anytime) at http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=300