Monday, July 11, 2022

Courtesy Anon.: A Short Primer, On Restoring Federal Union Rights... Post Tangerine.


This is too good to wait a day, for -- so we will run it now, in advance of the star show tomorrow. Thanks go out to my erstwhile anon. commenters!

. . .Speaking of Unions:

Early on, [Tangerine] issued three executive orders against Federal employee unions.

One item was to prevent union officials from spending time defending federal employees. To this end a talking point he used was that they were spending their time arguing about office assignments, and so weren't doing their regular work. Under the contracts office assignments are supposed to be based on seniority so that they are not used as political cudgels.

Consequently, when the party in power wants to attack an agency's ability to function and harass and fire honest certain employees they also start to reassign offices. They do this so people will complain to the union so the union has to deal with this in addition to the employees (and whistleblowers) who are trying to defend the public. (I saw this at the FDA.)

If there are union officials who abuse their position to not do work they're typically the type of people who also won't fulfill their union responsibilities. Consequently, they will eventually be voted out anyway. (I also saw this.)

This canard about the Unions arguing about office assignments has been raised by other Republicans again. It should be remembered that Federal Employees can't strike and that pay and benefits are set by Congress and are beyond negotiating.

Therefore Federal union contracts are really just there to protect the honest worker from harassment for political or personal reasons. Consequently, no matter if you're on the right or left people should be grateful for federal employee unions because otherwise when the party in power changes the people who are most closely aligned with whatever side you're on will have no one with experience to help protect them from attacks. . . .


Now you know -- and these matters are discretionary -- and the Biden Administration was't enforcing (and has now repealed) Tangerine's orders. Still the point is a solid one: Tangerine was the most openly corrupt federal employee the world has ever seen.

नमस्ते

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