Sen. Johnny Isakson: Co-sponsors Legislation to Restrict Amount of Union Business Federal Employees May Conduct While On Government Payroll

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Isakson Co-sponsors Legislation to Restrict Amount of Union Business Federal Employees May Conduct While On Government Payroll

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., announced that he is a co-sponsor of legislation that would restrict the ability of federal employees to conduct as much union-related business as they want at the office while on the government payroll.

The Federal Employee Accountability Act seeks to curtail the amount of time federal employees are allowed to perform union-related activities while working on the government payroll. The legislation would allow federal employees to conduct union business at their government jobs only in rare circumstances when the federal agency and the union agree it is “reasonable, necessary and in the public interest.”

“While on the taxpayers’ dime, federal employees should not be allowed to spend the entire day, every day, conducting union-related business and not doing the government job they were hired for,” said Isakson. “This is commonsense legislation that would help ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being used for union activities that should instead be conducted during the employees’ paid time off, as would be demanded in the private sector.”

According to the Office of Personnel Management, the government spent more than $157 million paying federal employees for conducting 3.4 million hours of union business in 2012. The Government Accountability Office, in a November 2014 study, found that in just eight government agencies alone, there were 386 federal employees spending 100 percent of their time on union business.

The legislation seeks to curb the practice where union activities are taking take up 100 percent of a federal employee’s work day. The Federal Employee Accountability Act would not affect federal employees’ ability to have representation in hearings.