AFGE Sues Over Impasses Panel Ruling

     From Government Executive:

A federal employee union local in New York on Wednesday filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating a court ruling blocking the key provisions of three controversial workforce executive orders.

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 3369, which represents Social Security Administration workers in New York, argued in a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that the White House, Social Security Administration and the Federal Impasses Panel effectively used the collective bargaining process to do an end-run around an injunction against the orders.

In May 2018, President Trump issued three executive orders that sought to shorten the length of performance improvement plans to 30 days, exempt adverse personnel actions from grievance proceedings, streamline collective bargaining negotiations, and significantly reduce the number of work hours and activities that union members can spend on official time. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in August 2018 blocked the key provisions of the orders, finding that they collectively “eviscerated” federal workers’ collective bargaining rights.

In July, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Circuit Court for the D.C. Circuit overturned that decision on jurisdictional grounds, but the injunction remains in place as the court weighs whether to rehear the case with all 11 judges.

The complaint argues that the Social Security Administration’s actions in negotiating a new contract with AFGE constitute a successful effort to “circumvent” the injunction prohibiting the government from implementing the executive orders and claimed that the impasses panel exceeded its authority by acting as an implementation arm of the Trump administration, rather than an independent arbiter of labor-management bargaining disputes. ...