In early December, the American Federation of Government Employees completed a five-year agreement with the Social Security Administration. This contract ensures that its 42,000 federal employees will have the option to work in the office for a minimum of two days per week.
Reportedly, unions representing federal employees at various agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management, are in the process of finalizing contracts. These contracts aim to ensure that employees have the right to work in the office for a minimum of just two days per pay period.
The purpose of these provisions is to oppose Trump’s proposal of mandating federal employees to report to the office five days a week under threat of dismissal. It is expected that the Trump administration will contest these contractual conditions.
Federal employees, who are being paid by taxpayers, are causing additional complications by prioritizing work for their unions instead of fulfilling their job responsibilities. This situation is disheartening as it diverts resources away from the tasks they were originally hired to perform.
The practice of federal employees being “released” from their duties to work for their federal employee unions is commonly referred to as “official time.” During his first term, Trump placed limitations on this practice, allowing federal employees to allocate no more than 25% of their paid time to work for their union. However, President Joe Biden reversed this policy on his third day in office by signing an executive order that reinstated federal employees’ ability to dedicate up to 100% of their time to their union activities.
Many federal workers, including some nurses at the Veterans Administration, are now once again dedicating all of their time to working for their union instead of focusing on their actual job responsibilities, such as providing medical care to patients.
Presumably, the Biden administration removed the Office of Personnel Management’s webpage on official time, which was previously used by recent administrations, both Democratic and Republican, to track and report on federal employees’ use of official time.
It is currently impossible to determine the exact number of federal employees who are working for their unions, the total amount of time they spend, or the cost to taxpayers. However, it is highly likely that these figures surpass the 3.6 million hours spent by federal employees in the final year of the Obama administration in 2016. This substantial amount of time is equivalent to nearly 2,000 full-time federal employees. If we consider the average federal employee salary of $106,000, along with an additional $56,500 in benefits, the official time recorded in 2016 would amount to over $321 million per year in today’s terms. It is important to note that this estimate is likely significantly higher and may well exceed billions of dollars during the four-year tenure of the Biden administration.
Taxpayers find themselves in a frustrating situation where they are obliged to compensate federal employees for time spent not fulfilling their duties. What’s even more disheartening is that taxpayers are also compelled to fund federal employees who negotiate for rights that go against the interests of the taxpayers themselves. These rights include collective telework entitlements that ultimately diminish the quality of government services, as well as procedures that protect uncooperative and harmful federal employees from facing appropriate disciplinary actions.
The No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and former Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), aims to eliminate the practice of official time. This legislation would make it more challenging for federal employees’ unions to obstruct incoming administrations and increase costs for taxpayers. Under this act, federal employees’ unions would be responsible for funding their own payrolls.