Federal HR news topics include federal employee unions, labor relations, bargaining, pay/leave and benefits.
Following President Obama’s recent proposal for a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a pay freeze for Department of Energy contractor employees.
Locality pay extensions; government-wide categories of non-general schedule employees
The President’s Pay Agent has decided to extend the 2011 locality payments to the same Governmentwide and single-agency categories of employees authorized to receive the 2010 locality payments. If a pay freeze is enacted for 2011, these employees will be entitled to continue to receive locality payments at the 2010 level. Here is the OPM announcement.
Groucho Marx said “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” In a recent arbitration appeal, the FLRA reversed itself over an issue involving an agreement made by political direction with the union in the waning days of the Clinton Administration. The current Chairman, a member when the original case was decided did not dissent then but now gives the union not only a second bite of the apple but, arguably, the whole bushel. Is it a holiday gift? You decide.
This is the CRS summary of HR 1722 which as become the “Telework Enhancement Act of 2010”
2010 would require each agency to establish a policy under which employees may be authorized to telework to the maximum extent possible without diminishing employee performance or agency operations.
The “Telework Enhancement Act of 2010” has been passed by Congress and sent to the President for signature. The bill is designed to increase the amount of telework performed by federal employees and establishes requirements for agencies in implementing telework throughout most of the federal government.
The new employee probationary period is “the most elegantly simple program we have in Human Resources.” Unlike many other areas of human resources the author has encountered, it is elegant in design and simple to use.
The author requested and received FLRA’s training materials used to train participants in pilot programs in which parties will bargain agency permissive topics. These pilots dramatically expand union bargaining rights. It’s unclear what authorizes union representatives’ official time for this training or authorizes FLRA to train the representatives of a non-governmental entity for free. You decide.
Look for scary stories about the impact on your federal career as a result of this week’s election. Our advice: take a deep breath and think about the new political structure before jumping to conclusions.
