Official time is on-the-clock time that federal employees with union roles can spend on certain union-related duties, Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA group of nine Republican senators is pressing OPM to restore on its websites past reports on usage of official time, long a target of many Republicans in Congress, scrutiny that federal employee unions see as an effort to undermine them.
“This webpage, which has been made available by various administrations since 2013, is critical for congressional oversight over the federal civil service workforce. Further, it is also concerning that under this administration, OPM appears to have stopped creating official time reports which have been published since 1998,” said the letter from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and others.
Official time is on-the-clock time that federal employees with union roles can spend on certain union-related duties, such as negotiations and representing employees in disciplinary cases and other disputes with management. Reducing amounts and allowable uses of official time was one focus of the executive orders at the heart of Trump administration civil service policies, orders that the Biden administration quickly revoked.
The reports have not been publicly available for several months. OPM has been reorganizing its website during that time with some other information also taken down; it is not clear whether that is intended to be only temporary, however. The reports were not issued annually as a matter of course, but rather mostly in response to directives Republicans put in spending bills affecting OPM.
The most recent report, issued in 2020 and covering 2019, showed a drop from the previous accounting, covering 2016, reflecting the Trump administration initiative. 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.
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.
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