The Trump administration is taking on public-sector unions to reduce the amount of time that some federal employees use to do work for their labor union but get paid by taxpayers.
The administration’s goal is to weed out union officials who work exclusively on “official time” and do no work for the taxpayers, according to a source with knowledge of the administration’s plans.
The overhaul is intended to ensure that official time is only a part-time activity. Under the changes, no federal employee would be allowed to spend more than one-fourth of their paid time on union work, and they must remain licensed and qualified for their official job. The source noted that a review found instances where people in specialized fields such as nursing spent so much time doing union work that their professional licenses had expired.
The two largest unions for federal workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Government Employees, have filed suit against the administration, vowing to fight the changes.
“Together the nation’s two largest public employee unions are presenting a united front in opposition to the White House’s latest attack on working families and union rights,” AFGE general counsel David Borer said Tuesday.
Official time was first allowed under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and is essentially viewed as a trade-off for certain limitations put on federal worker unions, such as prohibitions on striking. Its use, which is widespread, increased during the Obama administration. The White House’s Office of Personnel Management reported last month that official time cost taxpayers $175 million in 2016, up from $162 million in 2014, the last time the practice was surveyed. The total number of official time hours was 3.6 million, up 100,000 hours from 2014.
The administration’s proposed changes, based on an executive order signed by President Trump late last month and officially released last week, would limit official time to 25 percent of a worker’s total paid time; prohibit lobbying while on federal time; prohibit the free use of federal property for official time; and prohibit the use of official time to file grievances. In the last case, unions were being paid by the government to sue the government.
The proposed changes also call on the Office of Personnel Management to track and make public all data regarding the use of official time, including the cost to taxpayers.
The unions’ lawsuit argues that the White House is overstepping its authority and violating the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, the law that governs federal worker unions. The unions argue there cannot be effective collective bargaining without official time. “The Official Time Order bars agencies from carrying out that statutorily required good faith bargaining, or from having a sincere resolve to reach agreement, and thus violates the president’s constitutional duty,” the lawsuit says.
Representatives of AFGE and AFSCME could not be reached for comment.
