Official Time Use Up Slightly

OPM recently released a report on the use of official time, which is on-the-clock time spent by federal employees to perform certain union-related duties, finding that the number of hours used in total rose by 1.3 percent overall from 2011 to 2012, although the number of hours per bargaining unit employee decreased slightly since the number of those employees rose by 1.6 percent. Official time long has been a controversial topic, with some in Congress criticizing agencies for paying employees to do work outside the duties of their jobs, but unions defending the practice as a proper tradeoff for their responsibility to represent all unit employees regardless of whether they pay dues. For a closer look, go to www.fedweek.com/HFI in the free info section of our website.