Tag Archives: arbitration

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 38 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 38 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Reddit moderators. The recent Reddit blackout is stupid and a pain in the ass. In what was essentially a hissy fit launched because Reddit wants to make it more expensive for 3rd party vendors to use the ecosystem, the real impact wasn’t felt so much by Reddit’s executive suite as it was by normal users who use the site for entertainment, information, or just to piss away their free time. It might be a Big Deal ™ for the mods, but I suspect for most people using Reddit day to day, it’s more of a so what. It has the same flavor of the protests that disrupt highways or otherwise inconvenience people who are just trying to get through the day. I can’t believe it’s the sort of approach that ever wins adherents to your side. Then again, I rarely find myself wanting to side with those who are trying to make a point by being just one step removed from tantrum throwing toddlers.

3. The wreck of the Titan. The word “experimental” is right there in the description of what the Titan is (was?). I know that among the wealthy and not so wealthy, there’s been decided move towards “extreme tourism” recently. Everyone wants that surge of adrenalin. I don’t find it appealing – particularly when they whole craft looks like something me and my three high school best friends could have cobbled together in the back yard over summer vacation. The media can’t help themselves from being entirely enchanted with this story. At best it should have been a one day story under the headline, “People who should have known better did something stupid and are now experiencing the natural consequences of their actions.”

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 37 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 37 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Laundry. Now that I’ve given in and paid off someone else to do most of the regular housekeeping, I find that laundry is the next highest on the list of things that annoy me around the house. The constant stream of wash, fold, put away, repeat is maddening… and that’s just for one person. I can get away with doing it once a week – or even every 10 or 11 days if pressed – and that feels altogether too frequent. I’d be ready to jam pointy sticks in people’s eyes if laundry day expanded to something that happened several times a week.

3. Party planning. I don’t like party planning, but it’s been dropped into my lap often enough now that I have a system. For big parties, those with lots of outside inputs or involving many moving parts (perhaps requiring circus tents and booking live music), I generally start planning six months in advance. Because I’ve done it often enough, I also have a solid core of mostly reliable team members assisting. As the last team to attempt putting this together is unable or unwilling to do so, here we are, four months out and there’s barely the most ephemeral outline of what the goal of this party might be – no idea what topics anyone wants to talk about (or who will be in charge of putting each of those topic together), no determination of which people will be invited to have a seat at the table (and no, you can’t invite an organization, you have to invite a person from that organization), and as best I can tell, there’s nothing even approaching a team of sufficient size and scope to pull everything together in the time allotted. I can provide advice, recommendations, and guidance, but I am not a decision maker. Until someone who is a decision maker decides to give a damn, we are where we are – nowhere. Consider this a pointed reminder, perhaps even a warning, that as we draw nearer to October, I’m not in any way going to consider a months-long lack of urgency on the part of others to suddenly become my emergency.

A message from the union…

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Well, well, well. At long last, the workforce received an email today from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1904. Therein they officially provided notification that they had arrived at an impasse with management and the future of telework is in the hands of the Federal Services Impasse Panel (FSIP).

The actual point of this email was asking us to respond to a survey covering our thoughts on telework. Wait. What? I’m not a fancy, big city union official, but getting a sense of the workforce’s opinion feels like something you might have wanted to gauge before you decided to hold the new policy hostage for a year. The sticking point, it turns out, is management’s position of wanting personnel on site two days a week versus the union’s position of only wanting two days per pay period (i.e., one day per week). See, the thing is, either one of these proposals is miles better than the agreement we’re currently working under which requires us to be on site three days a week.

The fact that this survey is being launched almost a year after opening negotiations tells me pretty much everything I need to know about how they’re doing business over there at Local 1904. It’s now been 36 weeks since the updated supervisory telework policy went into effect. I’ve read it cover to cover and can’t for the life of me find anything in there that is so objectionable that it should hold up negotiation for a year. It’s a perfectly serviceable policy that significantly increases telework opportunities over and above the policy that’s now in place for non-supervisors. Frankly as an employee I’m embarrassed that this has somehow become an issue that rises to the level of needing to engage with the Federal Services Impasse Panel.

I’ll never understand whatever “logic” is behind the elected leaders operating Local 1904 deciding to let a good agreement now stand in the way of the perceived perfect agreement at some unknown point in the future. I don’t know any of them personally, so I can’t say they’re ragingly incompetent… but after seeing in black and white why we are where we are, you’ve got a lot of ground to cover to convince me they’re not.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 35 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 35 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 34 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 34 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Going vegetarian. My most recent trip to the doctor involved one of his more humorous suggestions. He ended our visit recommending that I consider going vegetarian. Look, I don’t hate vegetables. I eat a lot of them. But thinking I’m going to opt for a lettuce and tomato sandwich sans bacon this summer ranks well into foolish and wrong territory. He obviously saw the twinkle in my eye, because he then hedged his bets a bit, calling for foods with reduced sugar and salt. OK, I’m not so set in my ways that I object to swaps and adds on spec. Most mornings I’m home start out with a cup of Greek yoghurt and a banana or other fruit. This week I opted to try the “zero sugar” option produced by my favorite yoghurt brand. I might as well have spooned wallpaper paste directly into my mouth. Throughout the day I’ve also been known to throw a handful of peanuts or cashews into my gaping maw from time to time. Fine. I’ll get the unsalted version. Yeah. For all the flavor there, I could just have easily saved my money and gone outside to eat a handful of dirt. I’m sorry doc, but when I’m deciding what to eat, taste and flavor is a pretty damned big deal. You’re never going to convince me to join the “food is fuel” crowd when food is so many other things too.

3. Writer’s strike. There’s apparently been a writer’s strike happening in Hollywood for most of this month. I won’t even pretend to be educated on the reasons for or against. As a consumer of content, I might have reasonably expected to have noticed that there was a strike happening by now. It turns out I don’t watch all that much “new” content. When I’ve been intentionally watching the screen, I’ve been doing a slow re-watch of The Sopranos and Mad Men these last few weeks. As for live television piped into my home by old fashioned cable, my set is usually parked on channels that air reruns of shows with season upon season of episodes available or BBC News to put some background noise in the house. Maybe the writers are victims of their past success. At the rate I’m going I could keep going for a decade before I realize no “new” material was hitting the airwaves. I’m probably an outlier, but with my particular givens, I’m not sure a WGA strike is going to have the impact the writers are hoping to see. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 33 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 33 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. House Republicans. Instead of lining up to throw George Santos, the absolute embarrassment of a representative who has already admitted to being a liar and fraudster and has been indicted on 13 counts of various crimes, out of the House of Representatives, Republican members of the House opted to refer the matter over to the black hole that does business as the House Ethics Committee. When they can’t put the republic ahead of politics on this very simple question of whether or not George is fit to continue in office, I have very little doubt that their position on any issue of substance will be equally as poisoned. Politicians have always been a self-serving bunch, but I miss the good old days when they at least had the common decency to pretend to be embarrassed when one of their own was caught out in the midst of being a common criminal.

3. My brain. Not including the few scattered hours here and there to attend to medical appointments, I‘ve taken exactly one vacation day since January 1st. My brain, usually reasonably agile, is about as responsive as a five gallon bucket of sludge.  I won’t testify to anyone else noticing, but I certainly have. This week, when I should be focusing in on the latest adventure in party planning that’s made its way to my desk, I’m struggling to put proper sentences together. Words and how they work is sort of my stock in trade. If the paragraphs read like gibberish to me, how they’ll read to someone seeing the information cold for the first time is deeply suspect. Despite my best efforts, my head seems determined to focus on counting down the minutes and hours to the nine day break I’ll start next Friday. It’s a happy thought, but not especially helpful in getting me through the week between here and there. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 32 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 32 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Amazon. For reasons I’ll probably gin up in a separate post to discuss in more detail, I’m opting to keep Anya and Cordelia on at least some wet food every day. In order to make doing this a little easier (i.e., so I don’t have to do dishes twice a day), I ordered some shallow stainless steel dishes from Amazon. They were a little pricey, in my opinion, for what they were, but I liked them so well, I ordered two more this past Monday. Wednesday afternoon, Amazon sent me this message, “Due to a lack of availability, we will not be able to obtain the following item from your order. We’ve canceled the item and apologize for the inconvenience.” Annoying, but it happens. I immediately logged in to Amazon to look for similar alternatives. There I found the exact product from the same seller at the same price in stock and ready for delivery tomorrow. Both orders, at the time of purchase, were showing in stock at one of Amazon’s “local” warehouse facilities. I’ll never know exactly why Amazon couldn’t fulfill Monday’s order even if it happened to be a day late, but can somehow manage to ship out Wednesday’s order in 1/3 of the estimated delivery time. As a one time half-assed logistician, it definitely leaves me with questions about what the hell they’re doing over there at the local warehouse, though.

3. Politicians. After a four plus month absence from the Senate, the corpse of Diane Feinstein was wheeled back into the Capitol to retake her seat and get “back to work” for the people of California. I just about it being the senator’s corpse… but only barely. At 89 years of age, the stalwart Senator from California is just the latest in a long line of American politicians who hang on grimly to power when age and physical or mental infirmity have pushed nearly all of their contemporaries into retirement if not into the grave. I’ve never been an advocate of term limits or age restrictions for our elected leaders. As a republic, we get precisely the kind of representatives we vote for in each election. Why on earth so many voters are willing to return politicians in their 80s and 90s to office – to legislate issues of online privacy, artificial intelligence, and what the world will look like during the back half of the 21st century – has got to involve some kind insane troll logic. Literally all of our wounds are self-inflicted at this point.