A bill to require an annual report on the use of official time by federal employees for union duties has cleared the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The practice of official time has drawn criticism from conservatives in recent years, resulting in several proposals to either scale it back or eliminate it. However, the bill cleared by the committee (HR-568) would only require an annual accounting from OPM.
OPM for many years produced such reports annually but there was no formal requirement in law. The most recent report, produced at the request of bill sponsor Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., showed that in 2011, 3.4 million hours were spent on official time (at a cost of $155 million). That was up from 3.1 million hours in 2010, but still well below the peak in recent years of 4.8 million in 2002.
The number of hours per bargaining unit employee was 2.8 in 2011, compared with 4.2 in 2002.
Federal unions say that official time is a tradeoff for the requirement in federal labor law that they represent all employees in a bargaining unit, whether a dues-paying member or not. Official time by law is to be used only for representational tasks such as bargaining, dispute resolution and so on, and is not to be used for internal union business.
