If the membership of Local 17 approves, Local 17 will pursue arbitration to argue for proration or overtime compensation for time spent on the reinvestigation kerfuffle.
Board attorneys are facing reinvestigations, as the Board Attorney position is now seen as higher risk than previously considered.
These reinvestigations are time consuming. An attorney with a small family who has not relocated in many years could get away with a three-hour commitment to complete the paperwork. Those who have been more itinerant, held serval jobs, or who served in the military would have to sacrifice a day or more to enter the information. Heaven help those with roommates, large families, or a trail of former spouses. And if you were born outside of the United States, forget about it. In addition to providing mounds of information and forswearing terrorism and other treachery, some attorneys must submit to fingerprinting and interviews. All of the foregoing must take place during duty time and/or after hours.
Management has the right under law to determine internal security practices. As such, Management has a right to order reinvestigations. Just because a management right is implicated, however, does not mean that the Union has no rights of its own. The Union can bargain over procedures and appropriate arrangements.
In connection with notice regarding the reinvestigations, the National VA Council (NVAC) filed a Demand to Bargain, as AFGE bargaining unit employees in more than one local are implicated. Local 17 filed its own Demand to Bargain in order to preserve the rights of Board Attorneys whose needs are often unique.
Despite the Demands to Bargain, at which time implementation stops until bargaining obligations are met, VA began sending Board Attorneys cumbersome and invasive questionnaires. NVAC filed an Unfair Labor Practice (UPL) charge with the FLRA on several bases to include saliently “refusal to consult or negotiate in good faith.”
Board attorneys have quotas. Complying with the investigatory requirements detracts from time an attorney may devote to accomplishing the quota requirements. Similarly undesirable is fulfilling the investigatory requirements after hours without appropriate compensation.
Attorney-advisors began requesting proration or overtime pay as appropriate. The Board denied the requests to include because of the above-mentioned Demands to Bargain and the ULP charge.
In response, Local 17 filed a grievance on behalf of Board Attorneys requesting proration and/or overtime pay as necessary. In order not to run afoul of choice of forum issues, Local 17’s grievance did not touch upon failure to bargaining or any other obligation under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (the Statute). Rather, Local 17’s grievance simply sought to enforce already bargained for provisions of the Master Agreement and the current MOU associated with the extant Board Attorney performance standards.
Management denied the grievance, presumably based upon poor guidance from VA human resources types or ill-informed OGC attorneys. Local 17 filed a Notice to Invoke Arbitration, and if the membership votes in favor of arbitration, Local 17 will pursue arbitration to enforce the rights of our Board attorney BUEs who should be given either proration or overtime pay in connection with the reinvestigation requirement.
To download the associated grievance documents (Grievance & FLRA Charge), please click the buttons below.
