The American Federation of Government Employees is planing rallies across the nation on Wednesday to protest the Trump administration’s move to limit “official time” — the practice of paying federal government workers for their regular taxpayer-funded job when they are conducting union business instead.
The protests are set to coincide with oral arguments in D.C. District Court for a lawsuit that AFGE filed against the White House over the matter.
In May, President Trump signed a trio of executive orders that prohibited federal employees from spending more than a quarter of their total paid time doing union business, and from filing grievances against government or lobbying it while on official time. The orders also prohibited free use of federal property while on official time and required any federal employee that takes official time to remain properly licensed and qualified for their government job.
Unions have portrayed the move as an attack on labor rights. “These orders are a direct assault on our apolitical civil service system and are nothing but thinly veiled attempts at busting unions and rolling back workplace rights across the country,” said AFGE President J. David Cox Sr.
The union will rally in front of the District Court’s steps and hold rallies in other cities across the country, it announced.
The White House has argued that the practice of official time has been widely abused, noting that some government workers spend a majority of their time doing union tasks instead. 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.
Official time increased during the last two years of President Barack Obama’s 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.
