Numerous GOP-sponsored bills have been offered in Congress over the years either to abolish official time outright or to simply require more thorough and regular reporting on it. Image: DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe long-running dispute over use of “official time” has been restirred with a request by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee for an accounting of that practice, which allows for employees to spend on-the-clock time activities for certain union-related purposes.
In letters to two dozen Cabinet department and major independent agencies, committee Republican leaders asked for data for 2021-2023 on hours used, numbers of employees using them, numbers of employees on official time full-time and in other levels of frequency, and their salaries.
“Given that employees’ official union activities can be conducted when they would otherwise be performing their regular job duties, it is critical that agencies track when and how official time is used,” they wrote. “Cases of 100 percent official time use create conditions for federal employees’ skills to atrophy as they forget how to, or otherwise lose the ability to, perform the jobs they were hired to perform.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa., has raised the issue of official time use in a letter to the Defense Health Agency also asking for more information about rates of offsite work and building occupancy levels.
Reducing the amounts and allowable uses of official time also was one focus of the executive orders at the heart of Trump administration civil service policies, which called the practice “taxpayer-funded union time.” The Biden administration quickly revoked those orders on taking office.
Federal employee unions criticize scrutiny of official time as an effort to undermine them. They see official time—which is authorized in law, with amounts subject to negotiation in each labor-management contract—as a tradeoff for the requirement that they represent all employees in a bargaining unit, even those who don’t pay dues.
Official time may be used for purposes such as negotiations and representing employees in disciplinary cases for representational and similar activities, although not for internal union business. Reports on its use have not been issued annually as a matter of course, but rather sporadically, mainly in response to directives Capitol Hill Republicans put in spending bills affecting OPM; the most recent report, covering 2019, was issued the following year.
A group of GOP senators objected when OPM last year took down a page on opm.gov where past reports had been posted. That page has not been restored, although the latest report is available by searching that site.
That report 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.
Numerous GOP-sponsored bills have been offered in Congress over the years either to abolish official time outright or to simply require more thorough and regular reporting on it—as a possible prelude to a later move to abolish it.
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