Federal employees would be able to spend no more than 25 percent of their time on “official time”-time spent performing union-related duties rather than normal job duties-under legislation (S-2383) newly introduced in the Senate by Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. Thurmond said that by the latest accounting, about 1,000 federal employees spend all of their time on union duties and that about 2,000 more spend at least half their time on union duties. The bill also would require agencies to compile and publish data on use of official time, which currently isn’t commonly reported. The most recent estimate was that during the first six months of calendar year 1998, more than 24,000 employees spent more than 2 million hours worth more than $48 million on official time.