End Gov’t Waste: Stop Paying Federal Employees to Perform Union Business

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Gee, what a novel idea.

End Gov’t Waste: Stop Paying Federal Employees to Perform Union Business

Trey Kovacs By Trey Kovacs | April 20, 2017 | 11:51 AM EDT

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, recently issued guidance that directs federal agencies to find ways to, in part, “reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce” and “Develop a plan to maximize employee performance.”

A good start toward fulfilling this directive would be to get rid of federal employees who do not perform any public duties but still are paid a government salary. Believe it or not, there are a surprising number of federal employees that don’t do any government work. Maximizing employee performance cannot be achieved without requiring federal employees to do the job they were hired to do.

According to a new Competitive Enterprise Institute report, there are an estimated 1,000 federal employees who spend 100 percent of their work hours on labor union business instead of actual government work. They are permitted to do this because of the little-known provision called union “official time,” which gives paid leave to federal employees to perform union business like lobbying, attending union conventions, and filing grievances.

In addition to the 100 percent official time employees, many more federal employees spend a portion of their workday on union business. The most recent data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finds that official time costs $162.5 million and federal employees spend 3.4 million hours on union business.

But OPM’s numbers are just an estimate, and a poor one at that. A previous government report found OPM uses a flawed methodology that underestimates the cost of the union subsidy. In addition, OPM’s numbers do not include all costs associated with official time. OPM only estimates the cost of salary and benefits of employees who use official time, but other costs exist. Essentially, the federal government pays for all the supplies a union needs to operate—like office space, telephones, supplies, and travel and per diem.

The new CEI report estimates that the annual cost of official time is actually about $200 million, which includes the potential costs of office space and supplies, plus adds 15 percent because that is how much OPM’s methodology underestimates the cost.

Currently, two pieces of legislation are making their way through Congress that would increase transparency and curtail the worst abuses of official time.

Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) introduced the Official Time Reform Act of 2017, which prohibits federal employees from lobbying on behalf of federal employee unions on official time. In addition, any federal employee who spends 80 percent or more on official time in a day loses service credit hours for that day. Meaning those employees would not accrue pension contributions on days they primarily conduct union business.

The other bill, H.R.1293, enhances tracking and reporting of official time. Rep. Dennis Ross’ (R-FL) bill requires detailed, annual reporting of official time. Currently, the Office of Personnel Management only releases official time costs and hours used every two years and is years behind in releasing the costs of the union subsidy.

While these are worthwhile legislative efforts, Congress should pass legislation that completely eliminates this subsidy to federal employee unions. Official time amounts to a waste of over a hundred million tax dollars annually—an expenditure that does not serve a public purpose or provide any tangible benefit to taxpayers.

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/trey-k...-union-business
 
How or why they think they should be able to spend time doing something other than their job and get paid is crazy.

I hope they look into the training budgets and cut that non-sense as well. There are thousands of them that show up to conferences staying in nice hotels on our dollar in the name of training, when it's anything but that. It's supposed to be about training, and networking. It's a paid vacation to Vegas and other places where you the tax payer is paying 2-5k for a 4 day conference, and then paying on top of that for meals, travel, and hotels.

I was asked to speak so the conference was free. the cost was 2k for that conference, and most that showed up where government, they didn't know what they were doing based on the questions from those that actually attended and most where in-and-out the whole time. I could tell the ones that were non-gov because they were there, listening and asking questions, the others didn't even attend, but were out at the pool.

Class was on What to look for when performing IT Risk evals on Infrastructure. Very dry material.
 
Man, if I could have gotten paid,I would still be a vp. I was only reimbursed by the union for lost time on actual work days. Weekend travel and union business on my scheduled off days was done pro bono. And since the company got to schedule the meetings, the vast majotity was on my off hours.
 
Had a buddy that was in the Navy and stationed at Jacksonville, Florida. This guy was a crew chief on a plane that was used for detecting submarines and also surveillance duties. One of his jobs was to regularly check all the systems on his aircraft and if anything wasn't working he was trained to fix it. However, the Navy had private civilian contractors go over every plane on a regular schedule and fix any issues found. My friend bragged about lolly gagging onto the base in the mornings, sitting around reading the newspaper drinking coffe and shooting the bull for the morning then going to the gym in the afternoon and working out. About once or twice a week they would take a spin on a plane for an hour or so. If they actually found something not working they reported it and the private contractors fixed it. I often wondered if something had actually gone wrong on a real call up in that plane if my friend could have fixed it. He admitted after his initial training he was pretty much hands off because the civilian technicians did all the actual troubleshooting and work to fix the plane. Never could figure that system out and why we paid for it.
 
Originally Posted By: SlickerThanSnotwhat is going on here. you posting from home tonight tbone?


haha, yep, I was in a 2 day training, and unlike union workers, i would have to make up the work and was sending emails, and responding to requests. Sometimes the compiling data takes time, which leaves the second screen free to read one of the best websites i visit.

Ironically, i find that what most people say here, is almost always take it to the bank accurate, vs. the news. lol
 
Originally Posted By: GCHad a buddy that was in the Navy and stationed at Jacksonville, Florida. This guy was a crew chief on a plane that was used for detecting submarines and also surveillance duties. One of his jobs was to regularly check all the systems on his aircraft and if anything wasn't working he was trained to fix it. However, the Navy had private civilian contractors go over every plane on a regular schedule and fix any issues found. My friend bragged about lolly gagging onto the base in the mornings, sitting around reading the newspaper drinking coffe and shooting the bull for the morning then going to the gym in the afternoon and working out. About once or twice a week they would take a spin on a plane for an hour or so. If they actually found something not working they reported it and the private contractors fixed it. I often wondered if something had actually gone wrong on a real call up in that plane if my friend could have fixed it. He admitted after his initial training he was pretty much hands off because the civilian technicians did all the actual troubleshooting and work to fix the plane. Never could figure that system out and why we paid for it.

That is just sad.. Worse, is that a lot of the military guys do that. They have the opportunity to learn, but step back and don't. Then that end of contract comes and you have to find something else to do. I work in a bank doing tech risk. I learned all i could about all things tech. My peers didn't. I make a lot, they work as a police, or security, and other things. Nothing against that. But, we were there together and i tried to get them to learn with me to make it better, but now they are mad they didn't do it. especially when they are working nights and weekends or holidays.

Union rules of limiting work and role specific specialties doesn't broaden your marketable skills. Doing that will help you personally in the long run.


We as a country have way to many people working for the Government and it's time to cut their funding and ranks.
 
Good grief, our gov't gives foreign aid, billions of dollars to people in other countries that hate us. They give millions to universities and other schools that teach/indoctrinate kids to hate our country and our freedoms. I wish they would correct the bigger issues first.
 
I'm a contractor. Some of the things I've seen make me shake my head. It all seemed far too good to be true, and I kept telling people that. The government has run amuck for the last thirty years. Obviously SOMETHING has to change. Just a shame it took us getting this far in debt to get anyone to look at the frivilous spending or extra fat (read: unnecessary employees) to do something about it.
 


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