President Trump's Executive Orders - what they mean and what you can do.
The EO on official time –EO 13837: • Eliminates time for union representatives to ensure that the agency is living up to its contractual obligations, while allowing time for employees to represent themselves. • Eliminates time for representatives to contact members of Congress about workplace issues and employees’ pay, benefits and frontline workplace conditions.
The EO on collective bargaining - 13838: • Creates a “Labor Management Group” that will dictate agencies’ bargaining proposals. • Directs agencies to follow these dictates, resulting in perfunctory, bad faith bargaining. . • Directs agencies not to engage in bargaining aimed a meeting the parties’ mutual interests. • Directs agencies to unilaterally impose proposals if unions don’t agree to agency proposals. • Directs agencies not to bargain over subjects the law allows them to bargain.
EO 13839 – “Streamlining Removals” • Limits time period from when an employee is notified of a proposed removal to the decision to the minimum time allowed by law, 30 days, which would undermine fair decisions. • Limits performance improvement periods to 30 days, which would be insufficient and unreasonable for many jobs. • Encourages agencies to ignore progressive discipline and equitable treatment when disciplining employees. • Excludes removals from the grievance procedure, depriving unfairly terminated employees of union provided representation. • Excludes performance appraisals, awards, QSIs and incentive payments from grievance procedures, giving agencies total discretion in these areas.
What the orders mean for employees and the public • Elimination of rights like AWS, telework, fair promotions, fair appraisals, equitable overtime assignments and transit subsidies because those rights cannot be enforced. • Undermine due process protections that are critical to ensuring that the government operates based on merit systems principles, not patronage and favoritism. • No meaningful frontline employee input into how they are treated and how agencies can better serve the public.
NTEU actions to date and what members can do • NTEU has taken a number of actions in this fight, and we are not done yet. To date, we have alerted our members, filed a lawsuit, are building support on Capitol Hill against the EOs, prepared our bargaining strategy and engaged with the media. • Members should contact their congressional representatives and tell them we support rescission of the EOs. • Urge your members of Congress to co-sponsor legislation, S. 2340 and H.R. 4878, to reinstate the labor-management forums that President Trump abolished last year. • While visiting the Legislative Action Center, weigh in on the administration’s proposed pay freeze and retirement cuts, and NTEU-supported legislation to provide employees with a 3% pay increase for 2019. • Your NTEU membership supports our efforts on the Hill, at the bargaining table and in the courts.