With the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) coming under fire for the questionable practices of its patent examiners who worked from home, as detailed in an internal administrative inquiry report, I imagine agencies throughout the federal government may feel some pressure to keep teleworkers on shorter leashes. Agencies may even try to cut some of those leashes and cancel telework arrangements. Agencies’ attempts to rescind or modify telework privileges are often received by federal employees as constituting direct personal affronts. A 2011 Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) study found that 87 percent of federal employees surveyed claimed telework had a…
For many federal employees, few things are more unbearable than being left with nothing to do. Idleness can be torture. My years heading the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) showed me that most federal employees are, or at least want to be, productive. However, given certain business cycles, overstaffing, funding problems, and other issues, some employees simply run out of meaningful work to perform. The U.S. Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General’s recent report on how U.S. Patent and Trademark Office paralegal specialists received full-time pay despite having insufficient workloads is probably an extreme example of federal employee…
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently announced that 31 percent of new executive branch employees hired in fiscal year 2013 were veterans, marking the fifth consecutive year that the veteran hiring rate has increased. In making this announcement, OPM highlighted how the 2013 fiscal year rate represented the “highest percentage of military veterans [hired by the executive branch] since 1974.” It is important for federal managers to be cognizant of that fact that many veterans in this current wave of new hires will be grappling with a condition that technically did not exist when that older wave rose in…
The furor that the IRS recently sparked with its claim that tens of thousands of former Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner’s e-mails were lost and not recoverable has given lawmakers involved in the tea party probe a taste of the frustration federal employees often experience when fighting adverse actions or discrimination. Having served as the chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and later represented federal employees before the quasi-judicial agency, I have heard my fair share of excuses as to why agencies cannot provide documentation or witnesses during the discovery process. And sometimes agencies do not even go…
At a time when the federal government is horrendously failing to support veterans and service members, the end of a three-year demonstration project last Friday could not have been timed any worse. Under this demonstration project, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) had shared some of the responsibility of investigating federal employees’ Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) complaints – a task usually exclusive to U.S. Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment Services (VETS). Enacted in 1994, USERRA is the most recent amendment to a series of laws dating back to the 1940s designed to protect returning service members’…
In response to news reports that management at the Department of Veterans Affairs punished staff members at VA facilities who criticized the agency’s deceptive patient waitlist practices, Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake asked the agency’s acting inspector general to investigate claims of retaliation against whistleblowers. I believe anyone reviewing allegations of whistleblower retaliation – especially at agencies with large populations of disabled employees – should be on the lookout for adverse actions less common among non-disabled employees. In fact, the VA employs more non-seasonal, full-time, permanent disabled individuals than any other federal executive branch (not including the Department of…
For many federal employees, summer is the time to get some much needed rest and relaxation. They place a premium on this vacation time. In fact, a 2008 Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) survey of new hires found that 94 percent of respondents viewed vacation time as important to a job offer, beating out the percentage of respondents who said the same about health insurance and 401(k) or fixed pension plans. But while serving as chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), I came across cases involving employees who took their love of vacations too far, making their R&R…
The Office of Special Counsel’s announcement last spring of its enforcement actions against two IRS employees who in 2012 engaged in partisan political activities in violation of the Hatch Act did not surprise me very much. After all, the alleged misconduct happened during a presidential election year. What did surprise me, though, was the technologically simplistic nature of the misconduct: federal employees conveying over the telephone partisan political messages. More specifically, one IRS customer service representative urged taxpayers to vote for President Barack Obama. The other employee, a tax advisory specialist, told a taxpayer she was “for” Democrats and…
Earlier this spring the U.S. Supreme Court reexamined the limitations to public employees’ freedom of speech when it heard oral arguments for the case of Lane v. Frank. The case involves an Alabama community college program director who testified before a federal grand jury that a state legislator had a no-show job at the institution. The school’s president later terminated the director, who claimed the termination represented retaliation for his grand jury testimony, in violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had found the director’s speech did not qualify as…
President Barack Obama – in the wake of emerging details about the Phoenix VA secret waiting list scandal – recently threatened that “anybody found to have manipulated or falsified records at VA facilities has to be held accountable.” With this threat out there, I believe one issue that needs to be ascertained is whether, or to what extent, any federal employees were “cooking the books” under orders. An interim report by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) stated schedulers at various VA locations claimed scheduling supervisors told them “to review…[clinic appointment availability] reports and…