Public Service Recognition Week: Octavia Hall
May 8th, 2012 | Air Force Defense Unions | Posted by Blair Tomlinson
As an Army brat, Octavia Hall has always been around public service. She spent most of her life in Germany bouncing around several bases. Hall said it was both her family and her community who encouraged her to serve.
“When I went out to the bus stop, I remember the soldiers coming over to talk to us about going to school, getting a good education, asking about our career goals. They contributed a lot to my wanting to serve,” Hall said.
As military families do, Hall’s family moved again, this time to Maryland. In high school she was active in cheerleading and a singing-show group she compared to the hit show Glee.
When graduation approached, Hall wasn’t interested in military service, but she knew there was a place for her on the civilian side. After receiving her diploma from La Plata High School, she was hired as a resource adviser at Joint Base Andrews. Hall helped families with child-care needs, career development courses and dual military spouses dealing with deployments.
“It’s always been instilled in me to help others in need,” Hall said.
Hall’s job at Andrews led her to her current position as the president of Local 1401 of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Listen to Hall share her views on public service:
Tags: AFGE, American Federation of Government Employees, Octavia Hall, public service
AFGE’s Cox to receive Yitzhak Rabin award
March 23rd, 2012 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
J. David Cox / Courtesy of AFGE
J. David Cox, the national secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees, on May 9 will receive the Yitzhak Rabin Public Service Award.
The American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center is giving Cox the award — which honors labor leaders and was named for the slain Israeli prime minister, labor minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner — to honor his years spent organizing federal employees at the Veterans Affairs Department and Transportation Security Administration. Cox said he helped organize at least 75,000 VA employees in some 100 elections nationwide over the last 16 years, as well as another 45,000 TSA employees last year.
“I am humbled, to say the least,” Cox told Federal Times. “Rabin is clearly a mountain, but to be chosen to be one of the faces on that mountain is a big thing.”
In April 2013, Cox will travel to Tel Aviv, Israel, where the Rabin Center will name an executive conference room for him. Past winners of the Rabin award have visited Israel in November, around the anniversary of Rabin’s assassination, but Cox said his trip is being delayed so he can help with get-out-the-vote efforts for this year’s presidential election.
Cox hopes the award will provide him a broader platform to speak about how important it is to support public workers, and all the services they provide for Americans — especially at a time when politicians seemingly have their sights set on feds.
“Right now, somebody is processing Social Security checks, somebody’s helping the vets who have numerous health care issues in service to this country, somebody’s inspecting the food we eat so we don’t fall over dead, and someone’s protecting the air we breathe,” Cox said. “They are unsung heroes. Right now, we’ve been painted as villains throughout this country. I don’t believe we’re villains in any way, shape or form.”
Past winners of the Rabin award have included Teamsters president James Hoffa and Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America.
Tags: AFGE, J. David Cox, Yitzhak Rabin
Friday Fun: Saxophones, elephants and ‘AFGE and Me’
March 9th, 2012 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
The American Federation of Government Employees today dug up a gem of a recruitment video from its archives. Behold: “AFGE and Me.”
It’s got literally everything one could hope for. Saxophone riffs paired with footage of union members playing a cheap toy sax. Elephants and horse-riding Border Patrol agents. Hawaiian shirts. Astronauts. Little kids. And best of all, a maddeningly addictive earworm of a chorus.
It looks and sounds 80′s-tastic, but AFGE spokesman Tim Kauffman says it was actually made around 1994. So, who wants to make the inevitable dubstep remix?
Tags: AFGE, Friday Fun, music
Herman Cain didn’t flub collective bargaining answer
November 15th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
Herman Cain (photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is getting pilloried for his stumbling answer on Libya yesterday, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel overreached when it said Cain “also appeared to be unclear on the issue of collective bargaining as it involves federal employees.” Here’s the full exchange on federal collective bargaining between Cain and the Journal Sentinel editorial board (and the video is embedded below):
Q: Would you favor collective bargaining for federal employees?
Cain: They already have it, don’t they? Yeah. They already have collect–…
Q: No, they don’t.
Cain: They have unions.
Q: They have unions.
Cain: They have unions, OK?
Q: But they don’t have the same bargaining…
Cain: They don’t have the same bargaining powers. Here again, collective bargaining, I support as long as it doesn’t create an undue burden on the state, the government, the taxpayer, this whole thing. That’s the issue. The principle is one thing, the execution is something totally different.
The Journal Sentinel’s editor was incorrect to state that federal employees don’t have collective bargaining rights. The article posted online yesterday correctly noted that the vast majority of federal employees don’t collectively bargain over pay and benefits, but hundreds of thousands do collectively bargain over workplace conditions. (For example, earlier this year there was a debate among lawmakers over whether Transportation Security Administration screeners should be able to bargain over workplace conditions.)
But it seems somewhat odd for the Journal Sentinel to muddy the waters on a fine point of federal labor law, and then call Cain’s response unclear — especially since nothing Cain said was factually incorrect.
Tags: Herman Cain
Army HR specialists vote to stay with AFGE
October 28th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
More than 1,400 civilian human resources specialists at the Army Human Resources Command have voted to stay with the American Federation of Government Employees.
The specialists voted 302-81 earlier this month to join AFGE. The newly-consolidated employees were transferred from three other locations to Fort Knox, Ky., as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process. The employees were represented by AFGE at their former locations in Alexandria, Va., Indianapolis, and St. Louis, Mo., but the Federal Labor Relations Authority ordered a new election to see if they wanted to remain with the union.
FLRA is expected to certify the results Nov. 1.
Tags: AFGE, BRAC, human resources
Kelley wins fourth term as NTEU president
August 10th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
Kelley (photo from NTEU)
Colleen Kelley was elected to her fourth four-year term as president of the National Treasury Employees Union last night.
Delegates to NTEU’s national convention chose Kelley overwhelmingly over challenger Eddie Walker. About 86 percent of votes were cast for Kelley.
Kelley pledged to keep fighting political attacks on federal employees, and to get agencies to provide enough personnel, equipment and other resources so employees can do their jobs properly.
“I am honored by the privilege to continue my efforts to move NTEU forward, to help ensure the voices of federal employees are heard in Congress and in their agencies, and to work to see that the public recognizes the dedication, commitment and professionalism of the federal workforce,” Kelley said.
Walker criticized Kelley for losing the election to represent Transportation Security Administration employees, and said that under her leadership, NTEU has not pushed hard enough for employees.
Tags: Colleen Kelley, election, NTEU, TSA
NTEU launches ‘They Work For U.S.’ campaign
July 21st, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
The National Treasury Employees Union is sick and tired of federal employees being knocked, and today announced a major nationwide public relations campaign that seeks to get them the respect they deserve. Their “Federal Employees … They Work For U.S.” campaign has distributed public service announcements to 200 television stations and 600 radio stations nationwide that highlight what feds contribute to society.
It comes at a time when the government is scrambling to find ways to slash the deficit, and cuts to federal employees’ pay and benefits have popped up on every major debt reduction plan. This has federal employee advocates nervous, and eager to change the narrative that has taken hold — primarily among conservatives — that federal employees are overpaid, underworked drains on society. But Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry has often said that while some people love to rail against “pasty-faced,” anonymous bureaucrats, their opinions change when you start talking about specific federal employees.
(Anyone who’s heard Berry’s usual stump speech has heard his incredibly animated impression of a grouchy, anti-fed citizen turning on a dime and enthusing about the National Park Service ranger who guided his family around Gettysburg, the federal firefighter who put out a forest fire and saved his home, and the Secret Service agent who exudes professionalism.)
This campaign aims to accomplish just that personalization. In a briefing with reporters announcing the campaign, NTEU President Colleen Kelley said:
Federal employees do very important work every day. They guard our borders, and they protect our air and our water supply, they provide school lunches to children around the country. They do important things that the public doesn’t really pay attention to because it happens, and so they expect it will happen.
Kelley said the PSAs could run anywhere from six months to a year, and NTEU plans to take the fight to social media as well, primarily through a Facebook page. Here are the two TV spots some stations are already running:
Ross throws down gauntlet to unions
June 30th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
Rep. Dennis Ross (photo by Blair Tomlinson)
Roll Call this morning published a column from Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., who is pushing for significant reductions to the federal workforce — and calling out federal employee unions:
While White House officials have paid lip service to the commission recommendations [to cut the federal workforce by 10 percent], they remain beholden to public employee unions, vehemently opposed to modernization and rightsizing of the workforce, whose members and unions finance and mobilize on behalf of the president and Congressional Democrats.
[...] The fact is the federal payroll, and the legacy costs, must be rightsized. Public sector union leadership can recognize this and assist us, or they can continue their knee-jerk opposition to the modern workforce. We hope they choose the latter.
What do you think? Is Ross right, and are unions standing in the way of much-needed changes to the federal workplace? Or do you think unions aren’t the problem, and Ross is simply playing politics by taking a swipe at them? Sound off below.
Tags: Dennis Ross, staffing cuts, Unions, what do you think?
AFGE: Shutdown would violate anti-slavery amendment
April 5th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
One of the great unresolved questions about the possible government shutdown is whether essential employees who remain on the job would eventually get paid for the work they did. Experts first told us most likely yes, although not until the budget mess is resolved.
But the Office of Personnel Management muddied the waters last month at a labor-management council meeting when General Counsel Elaine Kaplan said that’s an outstanding legal issue that was left unresolved after the last shutdown. In 1996, Congress decided to pay everybody back — even those who were furloughed.
So nobody really knows whether you’ll ever get paid if you are called back into work this time. It may come down to how generous Congress is feeling toward federal employees these days. (Hint: Not very.)
The American Federation of Government Employees thinks this smacks of involuntary servitude, and would violate the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed slavery in 1865. AFGE National President John Gage sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder March 28 making that argument, and warning it may be unconstitutional:
Dedicated federal employees will come to work because of their commitment to the people they serve, but they should not be forced to do so under threat of termination and with no compensation. I urge you to work with AFGE and the Office of Management and Budget to craft a plan that avoids the harsh result of federal employees being forced to work without pay or be fired if they are not willing to do so.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed involuntary servitude in 1865 by mandating that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Yet in 2011 the same government that is charged with defending the Constitution appears to be preparing to order vast numbers of civilian employees, who have committed no crime, to work without pay under the threat [of] government initiated administrative discipline. This is frankly outrageous, and we fail to see how such a sweeping order survives constitutional scrutiny.
Tags: AFGE, government shutdown, John Gage, slavery
DeMint: Strip feds’ collective bargaining
March 28th, 2011 | Unions | Posted by Stephen Losey
Sen. Jim DeMint (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
The collective bargaining battles that began in Wisconsin may be about to come to federal employees’ doorstep. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., told the blog ThinkProgress this weekend that he doesn’t think federal employees should have any collective bargaining rights.
Here’s the exchange between ThinkProgress reporter Scott Keyes and DeMint at the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, Iowa:
KEYES: Senator, would you like to see some of these bills that we see at a state level curbing the collective bargaining rights of public employees’ unions, would you like to see those on a federal level?
DeMINT: I don’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government.
KEYES: Including at a federal level?
DeMINT: Including at the federal level. That’s what elections are, collective bargaining, for people who are [inaudible]. I think it just doesn’t make sense. When we’re elected as representatives, to determine the fiscal condition of the government, then to have an unelected third party bargaining at the table with monopoly power, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Keyes correctly notes that most federal employees, except for those at the U.S. Postal Service and a few others, cannot collectively bargain over pay and benefits — just working conditions. DeMint and many other Senate Republicans last month unsuccessfully tried to scuttle plans to extend limited collective bargaining rights to Transportation Security Administration employees on security grounds.
DeMint earlier this year also proposed a five-year pay freeze for federal employees.
Video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »