AFGE Week in Review (March 10, 2008)

House Panel Calls for Pay Parity between Civilians and Military Members: The House Budget Committee passed a 2009 budget blue print on March 6 with a statement calling for an equal pay raise for federal employees and military personnel next year. The White House last month proposed a 2.9 percent pay raise for civilian workers and a 3.4 percent raise for military members in 2009. AFGE supports pay parity between civilian employees and military personnel and is pushing for an average 4.4 percent pay increase for feds next year to move closer to pay comparability between the federal and the private sectors. 

AFGE Testifies in Support of Paid Parental Leave: Speaking before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on federal workforce and the Joint Economic Committee on March 6, First Executive Vice President of AFGE National VA Council Mary Jean Burke urged lawmakers to pass a bill, H.R. 3799, which would provide federal employees who are new parents or adoptive parents with eight weeks of full pay and benefits. According to a report released March 5 by the Joint Economic Committee, the federal government lags far behind Fortune 100 companies in providing paid family leave as part of their benefits package. Federal employees have to use their annual and sick leave if they want to take care of their new child. They have the right to take unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, but most families can’t afford to forgo pay for any length of time. Federal workers, Burke said, should not be forced to choose between their paycheck and their family.

Burke’s comments are in line with those of Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee. Maloney, who introduced H.R. 3799 in October last year, said new parents do have the choice of using their sick leave and vacation time to care for their newborn, but that means they can’t get sick or ever need a vacation. She said the federal government, which is the country’s largest employer, should be leading the way in providing paid parental leave especially now that the government is trying to attract the best and the brightest in light of the retirement waves.  

Burke also told lawmakers that there’s another group of workers who don’t even have the right to unpaid leave under FMLA: Transportation Security Officers (TSOs). TSOs, front-line workers whose job is to keep bombs off the plane, don’t have workplace protections and rights enjoyed by other federal employees.  Not only their applications for unpaid leave are arbitrarily denied, they are also retaliated against for trying to take unpaid leave to care for their family. Unless TSOs are granted the same FMLA and other workplace protections as other federal workers, including the right to bargain collectively, TSA’s incredibly high attrition rate and low morale will continue and aviation safety will be imperiled.

Lieberman Calls for Governmentwide Pay Raise for TSOs: In a letter sent to the Senate Budget Committee last month, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said he disagreed with the administration that Transportation Security Officers, who work under a pay-for-performance system, should be exempted from the government-wide pay raise given to most federal employees annually by Congress. He said other employees working at the Department of Homeland Security receive the annual governmentwide pay increase and TSOs should not be given less.

AFGE has been working with Lieberman and other lawmakers to fix TSA’s pay system, known as PASS, because it is not transparent and doesn’t reflect performance like TSA has claimed. This year, for example, TSOs didn’t get the same pay raise they did last year even though their performance level stayed the same. 

Alaska Calls on Congress to Make VA Funding Mandatory: To ensure adequate funding for veterans’ health care, Alaska’s House/Senate Joint Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs last month passed a resolution calling on the U.S. Congress to move veteran health care funding from the discretionary budget to the mandatory category. AFGE Local 3028 President Kevin McGee testified before the committee in favor of the assured funding prior to the passage of the resolution.

AFGE has been calling for mandatory funding for veterans health care after years of budget shortfalls and staffing shortages at VA. From 1996 to 2003, the number of patients increased 134 percent, but funding for VA only went up 44 percent. 

AFGE supports a bill introduced in the Senate on Feb. 14 by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, to make funding for VA health care system mandatory. A similar bill was introduced in the House in May last year by Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill.

AFGE Wins Overtime Case against USDA: An arbitrator sided with AFGE when she recently ruled that the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service in Virginia violated the master agreement when it changed the way in which weekend and holiday overtime work is assigned, resulting in inspectors not getting overtime pay they are entitled to under their labor-management contract. Prior to April 2007, if any plants had to open after hours or on the weekend, the inspectors who would be assigned to work overtime would be those working at the plant on normal work days. But the new procedure pairs up two inspectors who may not work at the same plant and requires them to take turns doing overtime, resulting in several inspectors losing half of their overtime pay they used to get. The arbitrator agreed with AFGE that the agency violated the contract. She ordered the agency to return to the prior way it assigned weekend overtime, pay these inspectors back pay and award attorney’s fees. This victory is likely to affect similar cases across the country as the agency is implementing the new procedure nationwide.  

Inside Government: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., appeared on AFGE’s radio program “Inside Government” on March 7 to discuss pay parity, the importance of collective bargaining rights for federal workers, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which helps states insure more children. Also appearing on the program were Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, who discussed EEOC office closings and problems with today’s health care system; Rep. Mike Arcuri D-N.Y., who discussed TSA collective bargaining rights and universal health care; and Rep Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., who discussed veterans issues and the No Child Left Behind Act.  

Inside Government airs every Friday at 10 a.m. EDT nationwide on www.federalnewsradio.com and 1050 AM in the Washington, D.C., area. The one-hour program discusses issues that impact all federal and D.C. government employees. Programs are archived on the Federal News Radio Web site and can be heard on demand (available anytime) at http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=300.