Government agencies aren’t tracking the millions of taxpayer dollars that help fund government unions by paying full salaries to employees actually doing the work of the labor organizations, a new Government Accountability Office report found.
The inaccurate record-keeping may be preventing the public from knowing how much the government is spending on collective bargaining activities, the report said.
Government employees are paid as if performing their regular duties while actually working for unions in a practice known as “official time.”
Federal employees from the 10 agencies in GAO’s review logged 2.5 million hours of official time in 2013, up from 2 million in 2006.
Such official time union work cost taxpayers $61 million in 2013, GAO discovered. The report found nearly 400 federal employees who dedicated their efforts to union work instead of government work on a full-time basis.
But many agencies track their employees’ union work in ways that may mask the true amount of official time, GAO found.
In the case of the Department of Veterans Affairs, employees bill their time spent on union work as paid administrative leave, a broad category that includes other kinds of absences, an October GAO report said.
Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration and the Department of Commerce, record official time differently, depending on the type of union activity involved.
The confusing structure of official time records may lead to underreporting the amount of taxpayer money federal employees spend on union activities, GAO said.
It doesn’t help that the federal agency tasked with tracking official time throughout the government isn’t doing a very good job at it.
The Office of Personnel Management’s annual estimate of the total cost of official time “is not reliable because it lacks assurance of its accuracy and also lacks adequate documentation,” GAO said.
“OPM produces reports on government-wide use despite having no reporting requirement for official time,” the report said.
GAO’s cost calculation was $5 million higher than OPM’s estimate, which has placed the total cost to taxpayers for official time in 2013 at $56 million.
Few agencies track the costs associated with union work besides payroll, the report said.
Travel, office space, telephone services and other union resources are funded with taxpayer dollars but don’t appear in calculations of the cost to the government of running unions.
The SSA, for example, is required to report its non-payroll costs every year under its appropriations rules, GAO said. That agency alone racked up millions in travel, per diem, supplies and more in 2012.
Other inaccuracies exist in the way OPM collects official time data, the report said.
“According to OPM officials, OPM does not know if agencies’ reported official time hours are accurate,” GAO said, citing the agency’s failure to verify reports from different government departments.
Official time hours appeared to have decreased in five of the 10 agencies reviewed by GAO, despite a 25 percent increase overall. In the other five, employees dedicated an even larger share of their time to union work since 2006.
For example, DHS staff members logged 98,000 hours working with the union on the taxpayer’s dime in 2006. By 2013, the agency’s official time hours had ballooned to 272,000, with 488 employees drawing government salaries for union work.
That represented a 177 percent increase in official time hours, GAO said.
Agencies can spend virtually unlimited sums on their respective unions because there are no legal caps on the number of hours employees can divert to union work.
The VA used the most official time, logging more than a million official time hours last year among its 18 different unions.
A Washington Examiner investigation earlier this year revealed some union contracts allow employees to lobby Congress on official time. Other union efforts include resolving disputes and negotiating contracts.
Some agencies blamed budget cuts and furloughs for their increased reliance on official time, the report said.
DHS officials said the cuts required them to hold more meetings with unions to address staffing shortfalls
Go here to read the full GAO report.
