Use of "official time," on-the-clock time for employees serving as union officials to conduct union-related business, increased in 2011 on both a total hours basis and an hour per bargaining unit employee basis, according to new data from OPM.
A report said that the hours per employee rose to 2.82, up from 2.61 in 2010; it had not been higher than 2.69 since 2007. The total number of hours fell just short of 3.4 million, up by about 300,000 in a year and by about 600,000 since 2007.
OPM attributed much of the increase to bargaining and to more use of labor-management forums that in part are designed to solve issues before they evolve into formal complaints.
While there was a slight increase overall, there were some wider swings among agencies where usage is relatively small, resulting in large percentage changes for them. For example, official time use more than quadrupled at the Federal Election Commission, nearly quadrupled at the Consumer Product Safety Commission and nearly tripled at the National Credit Union Administration. However, the increase at FEC, for example, was only from 144 to 781.
Among the agencies with the largest numbers of bargaining unit employees, above 25,000, the greatest increase was at DHS, up nearly a third to about 171,000 hours, followed by VA, up a quarter to just under 1 million. Increases of around 10 percent occurred at Transportation, Justice and Agriculture, while usage fell by a quarter at HHS.