Taxpayers fear having to talk to the IRS, Medicare patients hate appealing coverage decisions, and beneficiaries dread dealing with the Social Security Administration, but one group that apparently has nothing to fear from the government is labor unions representing federal civil service workers.
The vast majority of the annual average of 193 complaints filed during the seven-year period involved the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest of the multiple labor groups representing portions of the 2.1 million federal civil service workforce.
A total of 935 complaints were filed during the period against AFGE, while 108 were filed against the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). Only nine of the 1,211 employee complaints resulted in FLRA enforcement against the union involved. Eight of those were against AFGE, while one of the complaints filed against NTEU went against the union. Eight other unions representing small segments of the federal workforce had single-digit totals.
Doubts About FLRA Objectivity:
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who is chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, told The Epoch Times that “the report is alarming, casting doubts on the [FLRA’s] capacity to administer the law with the requisite fairness and impartiality. We cannot overstate the importance of safeguarding the rights of every worker. The question of whether justice has indeed been served for all employees looms large and warrants our immediate attention.”The Epoch Times has asked the FLRA for a response to Sessions’ statement and to the AFFT analysis.
The AFGE, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, represents more than 750,000 federal workers employed by virtually every major department and agency and recently issued claims to be currently in the midst of a significant expansion of membership.
More than half (52 percent) of the total complaints for the period were dismissed, with 636 being dismissed in full and two dismissed in part. A total of 503 of the dismissals involved complaints against AFGE, and 56 were against NTEU. In 552 of the cases, the complaint was withdrawn by the employee prior to any FLRA ruling, including 416 against AFGE and 51 against NTEU, according to AFFT.
A substantial number of case rulings by the FLRA were appealed, but employees fared little better.
“Unfortunately, federal employees face an even more daunting challenge in appealing a loss against their union to the FLRA General Counsel, which has failed to grant a single appeal filed by an individual employee,” the AFFT analysis reported. The General Counsel denied 231 of the appeals, while 90 remain under consideration at the present time.
The lack of cases won by employees appears to be reflected in the annual totals. The highest year was 2016, with 94, followed by 2018, with 65, and 2017 with 60. But the number of new complaints filed plunged in 2019 to 26, followed in successive years by 25, 24, and 22.
The AFFT analysis argues that the current system of federal workforce labor regulations is strongly biased in favor of the unions, with a result that the costs in attorneys fees and lost time involved for an employee are a huge discouragement.
Is It Biden’s FLRA?
“This same inequity hurts employees who attempt to represent themselves without an attorney in a labor board proceeding. They often find themselves outmatched by union and employer lawyers who cut their teeth prosecuting labor board charges of their own. The lawyers seem not only to know the law; they seem to know everyone who works at the labor board—and they’re on a first-name basis,” according to the analysis.“Ultimately, union bosses should not have the power to force federal employees under their one-size-fits-all representation, a privilege which also gives them substantial clout over public services that taxpayers should be in control of.”
