Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Tuesday that he wants to roll back his department’s widespread use of “official time,” the practice of paying workers to handle union matters instead of government work.
But he said that reform will have to wait until existing union-management contracts with the VA run out.
“The issue of union time is a contractual issue between the VA and the unions,” he said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “It is something that was agreed to before I entered government. These contracts are multiple-year and so the VA will continue to honor those contracts.”
“When it comes to renegotiating those contracts, the issue of union time is an appropriate issue for us to negotiate on,” he added. “I believe that we do not have this right in terms of the amount of time that is being spent away from clinical duties and other duties. I believe that is something that we are going to have to negotiate to get it right.”
There are an estimated 346 VA employees who do no actual work for the taxpayers, according to a January report by the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office. Instead, these federal workers spend all of their time doing union work such as handling grievances or negotiating contracts. Advocates say this official time lets some workers to focus on union matters, which frees up others to focus on their regular duties.
The VA has far and away the most workers doing this. Partly this is because it is one of the largest federal agencies with 373,000 workers, making it second only to the Pentagon in the sheer size of its workforce. Only about 250,000 VA workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements though. By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security has 240,000 workers and the Department of Commerce has just under 44,000 workers. DHS has 39 people working exclusively on official, while Commerce has just four.
It is not clear exactly what the VA official time workers are doing and why so many are doing it. The VA doesn’t track that and GAO report offered no clues.
Shulkin indicated that he was not interested in ending the practice completely and said the unions did benefit the department. “I think that what the union contributes to making the VA a strong and vibrant work environment is important and I do value our union relationships,” he said.
