"Taxpayer-funded union time" has long been a target of Republicans in Congress and Republican administrations. Image: Nuchylee/Shutterstock.com
OPM has reinstated a requirement imposed for agencies to report on usage of official time—on-the-clock time that federal employees with union roles can spend on certain union-related duties—reports that federal employee unions see as a political effort to undermine them.
A memo on chcoc.gov tells agencies to report by March 14 on their allowance of official time in fiscal 2024, broken down by the totals, purpose, hours per bargaining unit employee, identities of employees who used it and the associated costs of salaries and benefits, the number of working time hours those individuals spent on official time, and more. It also calls for reporting on other costs related to labor relations including “value of the free or discounted use of government property for labor organizations or individuals.”
Official time has long been a target of Republicans in Congress and Republican administrations, including the first Trump administration. In several orders—not fully carried out during its time—it called for reducing the amounts and allowable uses, required more specific reports than in the past, relabeled it “taxpayer-funded union time,” a term the new memo revives.
The Biden administration quickly revoked those orders, stopped compiling the reports and later took down from the OPM site the page where previous reports had been posted.
Federal employee unions see official time—which is authorized in law although amounts are subject to negotiation in each contract—as a tradeoff for the requirement that they represent all employees in a bargaining unit, even those who don’t pay dues. It is allowed for purposes such as negotiations and representing employees in disciplinary cases and other disputes with management, but not for internal business such as recruiting potential members.
The most recent report, issued in 2020 and covering 2019, showed a drop from the previous accounting, covering 2016, reflecting the first Trump administration policies. Hours fell by 28 percent to 2.6 million, the average number of hours per bargaining unit employee from 2.97 to 1.96, and the salary cost attributable to official time decreased by 24 percent to $135 million.
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