Tag Archives: dues

More like Union Wrong…

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For reasons that defy any kind of human logic I’m familiar with, I’m nominally “represented” by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1904. Being a government employee, I’m legally prohibited from striking. Likewise, AFGE can’t negotiate my salary or benefits package. Given those facts, I have no idea what services they’re supposed to be providing that I couldn’t otherwise arrange through a decent labor lawyer if the need ever arose. 

As of the most recent update last week, Local 1904 has failed to come to terms with management on the new and improved telework policy for our organization. They had 30 months of COVID and now more than six months after returning to “business as usual” to get the ship in order. Every other organization we deal with has somehow managed to get their new policies in place to the benefit of their workforce, but 1904 remains a holdout. In fact, they’re so dysfunctional in this negotiation that the whole thing has been thrown into binding arbitration to resolve. Arbitration of this type can take weeks, months, or years to reach its conclusion.

If I were in any way involved with this union, I’d be mortified at our inability to arrive at what my brother and sister organizations have found to be a dead simple easy arrangement. As it is, I’ll forever see 1904 as the toad in the road trying to stand in the way of progress and the rigorous application of common sense. Utter cockwombles, the lot of them.

I periodically see the news or social media filled with stories about needing stronger unions or organizations wanting to bring in a union to represent them. Friends, be careful what you ask for. Since 2000, I’ve been in jobs that were nominally covered by several different unions. They all like to hype the idea of being “Union Strong,” but it’s been my experience that they’re far more often Union Wrong. 

I’ll walk down the hill and throw hundred dollar bills directly in the river before I ever pay them a nickel’s worth of dues. I’ll never know for sure whose interests they’re representing, but I can tell you it’s sure as hell not mine. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. COLA. Retirees are getting an 8.7% cost of living adjustment for 2023. In contrast, active employees are on track for a 4.6% general pay increase. In my head it feels vaguely like those two figures should be reversed, or perhaps they should be on par. I mean a raise of 8.7% for managing to simultaneously be retired and stay alive is good work if you can get it, but it sends a bit of an odd message to the people who are still schlepping to the office and actually doing the work.

2. Planning. I spent a good portion of the last month working with my advisor to make plans and tweak accounts to make sure I didn’t run afoul of the IRS in 2023. I see yesterday that the IRS has now updated their income brackets for next year due to this year’s inflationary pressure. Those updated brackets imply there are probably a few other changes coming in the next few weeks that could very well have made the last month’s work mostly or wholly unnecessary. Sure, it would be nice to have a little more cap space for IRAs and 401ks next year, but it also means I could have kicked my own planning down the road for a year or two before needing to make changes in how we do things.

3. The union. We’re three weeks past returning to the office under a pre-plague telework agreement that allows for working from home no more than two days a week. It’s also been three weeks since personnel not covered under the union contract were rolled up under their new agreement that allows them to work from home three days each week. In these last three weeks, there has been absolutely no communication from AFGE Local 1904 about why they’re continuing to hold up this benefit for the rest of us. I have no idea what they’re thinking, but they’re making management look downright reasonable, accommodating, and open handed. We’re rapidly approaching a point where I’m going to be willing to pay some dues so I can show up and be an antagonistic bastard at every single meeting they have.

Well, there’s your problem…

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One of the biggest challenges of being young and ambitious and employed by the federal government all at the same time is that due to it effectively being a closed system, the ranks are filled with crusty old bastards who are blocking your route to plum assignments. They’ve been retired in place for years now and have no intention of leaving. For the generation coming up through the ranks, these are nothing so much as roadblocks, whose skill sets and mentality would be better suited for the government of 1967 than that of 2007. I’m not suggesting here that there should be a mandatory retirement age, just that there reaches a point where it’s no longer in the best interest of the government to keep these people on the payroll. In fact, I don’t know why you would reach 40 years of service and actually still want to hang around. Personally, I’m planning on playing a hell of a lot of golf by that stage of the game.

Of course the reality is that the federal bureaucracy is, at some unspoken level, a make work program whose personnel system has an unfortunate tendency to softly discourage young employees from turning a job into a career. When there is no clear path to advancement or even lateral transfer into a more attractive position, what incentive does a mid-level 20-something employee have to stay the course? Why would they wait, possibly for years, for a position or a promotion that no one can guarantee? Organizational loyalty is a great thing, but it has to work both ways. If you can’t reward the hard work and dedication of the Young Turks who designed and helped build the organization, they have to look to other opportunities and to their own future. Our generation isn’t one to sit around and “pay dues” just because that’s what our parent’s generation did.

The time has come to distribute the spoils of the transition we helped carry out. Historically, though, revolutions have a bad habit of eating their own young – just ask Robespierre or Marat. I’d recommend we all stay out of the tub for a while, just to be on the safe side of things.