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Bargaining |
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Comp Time for Authorized Travel:
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Local 12 has requested bargaining after notification that compensatory time for
authorized travel will need to be used within 26 weeks. We have too many members
working too many hours with little hope of using comp time to allow this without
bargaining the impact.
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Facts on Comp Time for Travel:
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- An employee may earn comp time for authorized travel for time spent in a travel
status away from his/her official duty station.
- Travel status includes only the time actually spent traveling between the official
duty station and a temporary duty station, or between two temporary duty stations,
and the usual waiting time that precedes or interrupts such travel.
- If an employee experiences an unusually long wait prior to his/her initial departure
or between actual periods of travel during which the employee is free to rest, sleep,
or otherwise use the time for his/her own purposes, the extended waiting time outside
the employee's regular working hours is not creditable time in a travel status.
- An extended waiting period that occurs during an employee's regular working
hours is compensable as part of the employee's regularly scheduled administrative
workweek.
- For the purpose of earning comp time off for travel, bona fide meal periods are
not considered time in a travel status.
- Once an employee arrives at the temporary duty station, he/she is no longer considered
to be in a travel status.
- Any time spent at a temporary duty station between arrival and departure is not
creditable travel time for the purpose of earning comp time.
- If an employee is regularly scheduled to work an alternative work shift, for example,
Sunday through Thursday, he/she may not earn compensatory time off for traveling
on Sunday since he/she is already receiving his/her rate of basic pay for those
hours.
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NSPS |
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12 Days left to Comment: |
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The deadline for Federal Register comments is March 16th. Whatever comments you
send counts as a comment -- even if it’s a one-liner. Just be constructive so people
on the other end will take your comments seriously.
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Consider what NSPS is going to do:
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- End civil service protections.
- End automatic grade or step increases (Management could decide who gets raises in
a way similar to that used for bonus decisions.).
- End seniority rules on layoffs and reductions-in-force.
- Allow management to change work hours and deploy civilians at will.
- Cancel big portions of existing collective bargaining agreements (Local unions will
be almost powerless to correct inequities such as pay by cronyism without resorting
to costly lawsuits.).
- End meaningful collective bargaining.
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The comment link: www.cpms.osd.mil/nsps
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Other
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Government Cardholders at Risk:
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In December, Bank of America lost computer data tapes containing the private information
of about 1.2 million federal employees. Both the bank and the agency sat on this
information until this week.
One of our members was notified by letter that her account information was among
the lost data. The letter instructed her to monitor her account for unusual activity,
and ironically included an attachment containing helpful tips on how to protect
her identity. I wonder if one of those tips included advice to deal only with institutions
that will notify you the minute they discovered something is amiss. Or how about
a process on how to get out of being required to have a government card in the first
place?
Local 12 has written our congressmen and senators requesting information on (1)
Why this data was not protected, (2) What failed so the data was lost, and (3) What
safeguards will be implemented to ensure this will not happen again. We’d also like
to know (past the bank’s reasoning that these accounts have been monitored for unusual
activity) why people weren’t informed immediately in order to take steps to protect
themselves from consequences of identity theft unrelated to their government card
account.
One personal protection step would be to call all three credit bureaus, Equifax,
Experian, and Transunion (see numbers and websites below) to inform them that any
time a request for credit is received on your behalf, they are required to notify
you of that request for approval to act on it.
www.equifax.com, 800-685-1111 /
www.experian.com, 888-397-3742 / www.transunion.com,
800-888-4213 |
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A Fact Pattern from PSNS Legal Office:
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Q: You and your code have been working extremely hard
on the design of a new ship. You have received superb assistance on this effort
from Bob Smith, a contractor employee. You would like to send a thank you note to
the company expressing your code’s appreciation for the wonderful support the company
has provided. Is this permitted?
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A: No. Under the ethics rules, you need to avoid the appearance
of an endorsement of a non-federal entity. If you thank a company for the excellent
work they have done on a contract, one could view this as an endorsement of the
company. That does not mean you cannot thank the employee for the work he/she has
done. You may write a letter, or give a “Certificate of Appreciation” directly to
the employee thanking him/her for their work. You want to make sure that the employee’s
company does not appear on the letter or certificate. Before sending such a letter/certificate,
please coordinate with your contracting officer, your program attorney, and your
ethics counselor. |
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Local 12 Office Staff : |
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Bob Steinmetz, President
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479-2463
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Elaine Wrightson, Office Manager |
476-4334
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Katy McKinney, Chief Rep
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476-4862 |
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Have a hostile work environment? Contact Katy |
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Have a question about the Local’s budget? Contact Elaine |
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Have a parking question? Contact Parking POC, Mike Dunn |
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