More union abuse using your tax dollar
Have you ever heard of a government employee being on “official time”? That may conjure up images of a federal worker actually doing his or her job, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Official time is governmentspeak for,
… a mechanism by which the government pays union officials to work on union matters during their government workdays.
Yes, you read that correctly. Government employees are allowed to spend their time “on duty” doing union business, and you, the taxpayer are paying their full salaries and health care and pensions while they do so.
The Office of Personnel Management reports that federal employees spent over three million hours on official time in 2010, costing the taxpayers about $137 million in salary and benefits costs.
But, it gets better.
Some union officials split their time between union work and government work. Others, amazingly enough, work exclusively on union business while getting paid for their government “jobs,” and may not even show up at their government jobs for months at a time. The Department of Homeland Security alone had 62 employees on full-time official time as of July 2011, according to the department’s disclosure. [emphasis supplied]
Yes, you read that correctly, too. You paid the salaries and benefits for 62 Department of Homeland Security employees who did absolutely nothing for Homeland Security. They worked full time for their union.
It’s anyone’s guess as to how many full time government employees participate in this union gig.
The only thorough report on official time at the federal level was released in 1998, when the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee required the OPM to do so. At that time, 946 federal employees were on full-time official time, with another 912 spending at least 75% of their days on official time. Today the overall number is a mystery, because no law requires the federal government to disclose it.
Now you know why you have trouble getting government employees to answer your phone call…they are working for the unions instead.
9 Comments
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These are the things that unions fight for,not just a few more dollars. The public thinks it’s about the money or benefits.
Isn’t that the same?practice that we have here in Connecticut? Union leaders must be given time off to do their ‘union business’.?
Yes, they given time off to campaign. It’s frightening. If they can take time off, maybe we can do without them.
In the teachers’ unions, the public pays for all of the union officials, local representatives included. In the case of the national union elites, who pays for the salaries and all of the lavish perks they need? I know that at the upper levels of the union management, they feed off the membership.
The public, us, pays and pays. Business as usual.
That would be double dipping.??When Reagan was accused of triple dipping, it was portrayed as “Well, how dare he”.??Who knew … .they were actually jealous.
?
I find it harder and harder to pull my wallet out of my pocket every day.? Must be a self preservation instinct.
It’s actually written in to the contract language.
Outrageous…
We should be evil bosses and end union memberships for “our” employees.