Official Time: Good Value for the Taxpayer

6/01/2011

House Oversight and Government Reform - Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service and Labor Policy

Chairman Ross, Ranking Member Lynch, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on behalf of the 160,000 federal employees represented by NTEU. The focus of today’s hearing, H.R. 122, introduced by Congressman Gingrey (R-GA), would severely limit the ability of federal labor representatives to carry out their responsibilities under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It would also make it more difficult for agencies to have a productive labor–management relationship, which is critically important to efforts to efficiently perform agency missions.

Under the provisions of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (5 USC 7131) federal employees represented by a union can be granted official time, or the ability to perform during work hours, certain activities that are in the joint interest of both the union and the agency. The agency must approve the time and it must be “reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest.”

Unlike many private sector unions, federal labor unions must represent the interests of all employees in the unit it represents without regard to labor organization membership. (5 USC 7114) In other words, the union must represent each and every employee, yet each and every employee may choose whether or not to join and pay dues. It is completely voluntary on the employee’s part. The law does not allow “agency shop” arrangements in the federal sector.

Examples of activities that might be performed using official time include negotiating collective bargaining agreements, participating in formal meetings called by management, conducting and receiving training and participating in labor-management committees that explore efforts to improve agency functions.

The Civil Service Reform Act prohibits the use of official time for conducting internal union matters, organizing workers, soliciting members or conducting union elections, or for any partisan political activities. (5 USC 7131(b) and 7324)

The dollars spent on official time are minuscule compared to the money saved by having a mechanism in place to resolve disputes in a non-adversarial way and promote cooperative labor-management efforts to increase productivity, improve customer service and reduce the costs of doing business.

H.R. 122 would severely limit the use of official time by federal labor union representatives, making costly arbitration or litigation more likely. Congressman Gingrey offered an amendment similar to H.R. 122 to the FAA Authorization bill just two months ago. The full House rejected that amendment by a bipartisan vote of 227 to 195. We believe the House was correct to reject this amendment and urge the Subcommittee not to approve H.R. 122.