After repeated requests from a Congressman, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has put together a report on federal employee unions. The report shows that as of 2012 Social Security had 50,815 bargaining unit employees. Union leaders get official time to attend to union business. This official time amount to 247,563 hours in 2012 at Social Security, which is the equivalent of 119 full time positions or one for every 427 bargaining unit employees.
Questions: How many bargaining unit employees are dues paying union members? How many of that number are union officials/officers? How much is collected as union dues each year? Compare those numbers with any ratios made concerning employees in various categories.
ReplyDeletemany of the union officials get supplements to their actual SSA classification pay that puts them tens of thousands dollar higher in compensation.
ReplyDeleteThe federal gov't provides the time off for union business because they want to keep the unions weak. They do this by requiring each union to represent all employees (in the union's bargaining unit), but not requiring those employees to pay dues. So of course dues are inadequate - employees get the advantages of the union whether they pay dues or not. If the gov't allowed a closed shop (all employees pay dues) or allowed the union to only represent their dues-paying members, dues could pay all costs of running the union. But that would make the union stronger, which employers don't want.
ReplyDelete@ 7:35
ReplyDeleteI hope that you are aware that "closed shop" is illegal in many states.