If you're Mitch McConnell or John Boehner, you have to love the first paragraph in this Washington Post article:
"Unions are mounting a new attack on the Obama administration’s decision to furlough nearly one in two federal workers, rallying thousands of their members to appeal the unpaid days off to a little-known review board."
Don't get me wrong, I totally support the unions here and can't express enough solidarity with them. Yet, listen to it: it's the Obama Administration's furlough. I'm sure that Republicans from these districts that depend on Pentagon contracts are going to want to spin it this way.
This month, the beginning of some sharp furloughs that hit 20% or more of some member's pay begun.
"And while merit board judges typically hear challenges from civil servants who have been demoted, fired or retaliated against for whistleblowing, the overwhelming majority of the recent petitions are from Defense Department civilians. Starting July 8, 650,000 Defense employees took the first of 11 furlough days required as part of the $85 billion in budget cuts across government known as sequestration."
"Unions are mounting a new attack on the Obama administration’s decision to furlough nearly one in two federal workers, rallying thousands of their members to appeal the unpaid days off to a little-known review board."
"As of 5 p.m. Friday, almost 6,000 appeals had flooded the offices of the small, understaffed Merit Systems Protection Board — about equal to the number of cases it normally handles in a year."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/unions-rally-federal-employees-to-appeal-furlough/2013/07/22/fd72097e-f079-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html?hpid=z1Don't get me wrong, I totally support the unions here and can't express enough solidarity with them. Yet, listen to it: it's the Obama Administration's furlough. I'm sure that Republicans from these districts that depend on Pentagon contracts are going to want to spin it this way.
This month, the beginning of some sharp furloughs that hit 20% or more of some member's pay begun.
"And while merit board judges typically hear challenges from civil servants who have been demoted, fired or retaliated against for whistleblowing, the overwhelming majority of the recent petitions are from Defense Department civilians. Starting July 8, 650,000 Defense employees took the first of 11 furlough days required as part of the $85 billion in budget cuts across government known as sequestration."
“The message here is, we’re not going to just roll over and take this lying down,” said David Borer, general counsel for theAmerican Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. “We’re just getting started.”
In addition to Defense employees, workershave appealed from the Internal Revenue Service; the departments of Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development and Interior; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency. In all, about 775,000 federal workers facefurloughs of four to 15 days before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
The trouble is, of course, is that cuts have to be made somewhere. The argument the unions are making is that the Pentagon should cut contracts rather than people or not cut indiscriminately across all departments.
Can workers really be shielded by just cutting contracts? It seems doubtful.
"The agencies could have made deeper cuts to programs and contracts instead, the employees say. As evidence, some cited statements by Navy officials in April that they could eliminate furloughs for about 201,000 Navy and Marine Corps civilians by shifting money in the budget. Leaders of other smaller departments in Defense said they could do the same."
"But Pentagon officials insisted that furloughs be spread across all Defense agencies to share the pain."
“We have looked at all options to meet these cuts and believe one option must, unfortunately, be furloughs,” said Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Defense spokesman, noting that civilian pay takes up more than a third of the agency’s operating budget. “The guiding principle . . . was the preservation of the readiness of the force to accomplish the department’s mission to ensure our national security.”
To successfully win a claim, the worker has to prove that it harms readiness-not an easy threshold to cross.
It sounds like these cases will be tough to win-for the most part the agencies have discretion.
"Joseph Kaplan, a District-based federal employment lawyer, said it is up to each agency to decide how to save money."
“If they want to run the air conditioning seven days a week instead of saving money on our electric bill, they can do that,” he said.
"His firm was approached by several employees who wanted to be represented in furlough appeals. Kaplan said he and his partners did not take the cases because they did not think they were winnable."
The best hope is that this can help shame Congress back to the negotiating table. It would seem that such deep cuts to military contracts should make Republican Senators like McCain, Bob Corker, and Lindsay Graham all the more eager to negotiate with the Democrats.
If a sequester deal can at least make it through the Senate that's a big accomplishment and will pressure Boehner and company. It's the only road to really fix this.
No comments:
Post a Comment