The Social Security Administration does not keep adequate records on employees' use of official time for union business, SSA's inspector general said on the first of three days of congressional hearings on the official time issue.
On Wednesday, SSA inspector general James G. Huse Jr. appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee Social Security Subcommittee, chaired by Jim Bunning, R-Ky., to explain his findings about official time use at the agency.
Huse said SSA reported that employees spent 481,945 hours in 1996 on union activities at a cost of $14.7 million in salaries and expenses. SSA's 52,000 bargaining unit employees are represented by 1,800 union representatives, 145 of whom work on union activities full time. However, Huse said he could not verify the data because SSA does not keep adequate records.
Huse also reported that 25 percent of SSA managers who responded to an IG survey said they had suspicions or qualms about the abuse of official time. Some union representatives didn't always complete a required form before using official time, Huse said.
Some SSA field managers told the IG that they have problems with official time because they lack the authority to decide who can and cannot take advantage of it. Others conceded they did not follow official procedures all the time for granting official time use.
Huse also questioned the value of labor-management partnership efforts at SSA. He said SSA did not have data to show whether partnership had improved operations at the agency.
Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, charged that the subcommittee's hearings were politically motivated.
"The [House] GOP leadership has been at war with organized labor since assuming power almost four years ago," said Harnage. "It must be noted that Chairman Bunning is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate and that his campaign has hit a rough patch. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that he is using his subcommittee as little more than a platform to lift his low public opinion ratings."
AFGE says labor-management partnership at SSA has improved services and reduced the costs of employee grievances.
The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act set in statute the authority for federal agencies to pay the cost of union offices, telephones, computers and other support services, as well as to pay the salaries and travel expenses of employees who perform union work both part time and full time.
Several House Republicans have challenged the use of official time for union business. Rep. Dan Miller, R-Fla., has introduced H.R. 986, which would bar employees from all union work on official time except representing fellow bargaining unit members during grievance proceedings and representing employees during labor-management meetings. The bill has 36 co-sponsors. The Miller proposal was folded into a bill making its way through the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, but it was taken out amid union objections.
A General Accounting Office survey of 32 federal agencies found that employees spent 2.5 million hours on union activities in 1996. GAO noted, however, that agencies did not have a standard way to collect such data, so more official time may have been spent on union business. Twenty-seven of the agencies surveyed reported a combined total of 11,000 employees who used official time for union duties. Another 29 agencies reported spending a total of $50 million for employees' official time spent on union activities.
Union representatives and managers who have had problems with union representatives will testify on Thursday and Friday before the Social Security Subcommittee.
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