Although workplace changes increasingly ripple through the government, the amount of "official time" spent on labor- management issues appears to remain relatively stable, a report released yesterday by the Office of Personnel Management showed.
Under "official time," federal employees receive paid time off from assigned government duties to represent a union or its bargaining unit employees. Congress has granted the paid time off so that union officials can negotiate contracts, help handle employee grievances and attend meetings called by management.
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OPM's report, comparing fiscal 2003 to 2002, showed a 4 percent decrease in the number of hours used by federal employees serving as labor officials and a 2.9 percent reduction in the number of hours used per bargaining unit employee.
The cost of official time increased slightly, by 1.6 percent, to $128.6 million in fiscal 2003, the report said. More than likely that cost increase was caused by an overall rise in federal salaries, which increased an average of 5.7 percent during the 2002-03 period, OPM said.
The decrease in official time took place "in an environment of enormous challenges having a direct impact on bargaining unit employees and necessitating the involvement of employee union representatives," the report said.
In particular, unions were engaged in meetings on Bush administration plans to increase job competitions to determine if federal work could be contracted out and on planning for a new pay and personnel system at the Department of Homeland Security, the report noted.
Still, the report points out that the data provided by federal agencies to OPM "do not provide sufficient information for a more comprehensive and detailed analysis of official time usage in the federal government."
The government has not consistently kept track of the use of official time. The last three efforts to collect data were in 1998, 2002 and 2003.
To obtain more data, Kay Coles James, the OPM director, will ask agencies to submit information that better describes how official time was used from Oct. 1, 2003, to Sept. 30, 2004. For example, agencies are being asked to pinpoint how much time was used to prepare and negotiate a contract and how much time went to representing employees in dispute resolution procedures.
For yesterday's report, OPM asked 60 agencies to report on official time used by their employee representatives and received responses from 40 agencies, which have 99 percent of union-covered employees. The 40 agencies reported a total of 4.75 million official time hours for fiscal 2003.
The Defense Department reported the largest amount of paid time off for union work -- 1.19 million hours during the fiscal year. The department, however, is the most unionized workforce in the government, with 405,995 employees covered by union contracts. Defense's rate of official time per bargaining unit employee was 2.95 hours, among the lowest in the government.
In contrast, the Transportation Department, which has a strong unionized workforce that includes air traffic controllers, spent 16.94 hours of official time per bargaining unit employee.
The rate at the Social Security Administration, which has robust union locals, was 8.17 hours per bargaining unit employee. At the Treasury Department, which has a strong union at the Internal Revenue Service, the rate was 7.58 hours; at Veterans Affairs, 4.88 hours; and at Homeland Security, 3.44 hours.
James, in a memo to agency heads, said she believes annual reports on the use of official time "work to support greater accountability to the taxpayer in this important area of labor- management relations."
Talk Shows
Richard Huff, co-director of the Justice Department's office of information and privacy, will be the guest on "FEDtalk" at 11 a.m. today on federalnewsradio.com.
Dian Stoskopf, director of education for the Army, will be the guest on the "IBM Business of Government Hour" at 9 a.m. tomorrow on WJFK radio (106.7 FM).
"Doing Agency Telework -- at Your Second Job" will be the topic on the Imagene B. Stewart call-in program at 8 a.m. Sunday on WOL radio (1450 AM).
E-mail: barrs@washpost.com
