The American Federation of Government Employees, the biggest labor union representing Social Security employees has released a summary of its recent contract with the agency. Read it and you may develop a greater appreciation for the nitty gritty issues that have to be worked out in a labor contract. Lactation may not be your issue but for some agency employees it’s a very big deal. Labor unions exist to help their members deal with issues that an employer may find inconvenient.
Wow. There are some pretty significant changes. I’m disappointed there is still no childcare subsidy or firm telework protections. But Union activity protection and new orientation is definitely a win.
ReplyDeleteI’m quite shocked at changes to training. I’m glad to see the requirements to remove other work and give plenty of time, and to do the same for mentors. However I’m floored by the change to go to cadre based, train the trainer style new hire training right now. It makes sense when we are fully staffed and close to current on workloads, but not now. This will mean downtime to create the curriculum, downtime for the staff getting trained to be trainers (I don’t know who will do either of those) and then hoteling in clusters or having very small, individual classes where the quality will depend solely on the individual trainer. I loved my face to face years and years ago, didn’t mind staying in a hotel for 16 weeks etc. but I was young and single. I’m not sure the new demographic will go for that. I hope it work’s because face to face is the BEST! I’m just curious how many managers were consulted on this extra work.
They may do good on a national scale but locally they sucked. Any dispute they took an extreme position that management was never going to agree to rather than something that would be better for everyone. The last dispute management ended up giving the employees exactly what we wanted vs a pie in the sky resolution that the union pursued.
ReplyDeleteThe training stuff is so good I'm trying to re-read because I'm sure I missed something.
ReplyDeleteThe training stuff will never work with the current staffing levels. Pipe dream.
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