NTEU CHAPTER 280 - U.S.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
BEN FRANKLIN STATION, BOX 7672, WASHINGTON D.C. 20044 - PHONE 202-566-2788
INTERNET http://www.nteu280.org
E MAIL
Murphy.JamesJ@epa.gov
DESCRIPTION NEWSLETTER CURRENT ISSUES PRESS RELEASES LINKS MEMBERS PAGE HISTORY SITE INDEX
Inside The Fishbowl
Official Newsletter of NTEU 280
PRESIDENT Vacant
ACTING PRESIDENT (THRU 9/06) Bill Hirzy 566-2788
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
Dwight Welch 566-2787
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Bill
Evans 566-2789
CHIEF STEWARD Rosezella Canty-Letsome 566-2784
VICE PRESIDENTS Pat
Jennings 564-1089
Dr.
Arthur Chiu, M.D. 564-3296
Bob
Kenney 564-5127
Dr. Bill Hirzy 566-2788
Dr.
Freshteh Toghrol (410) 305-2755
SECRETARY Anne-Marie
Pastorkovich 343-9623
TREASURER Dr.
Bernard Schneider (703) 305-5555
MANAGING EDITOR Pat
Jennings (202) 564-1089
MAIN NTEU CHAPTER 280 NUMBER (202) 566-2785
UNION FAX NUMBER
(202) 566-1460
NTEU Chapter 280 Website: www.nteu280.org
NTEU National Website: www.nteu.org
Table of Contents
Chapter Meeting
and Seminar by National Research Council Panel
X-Bytes –
Roachez
OPP Employees:
Locator Listing Modifications
Nine EPA Unions
Letter Re: FQPA and Cholinesterase Inhibitors
Bush
Administration Attempts to Rescind Whistleblower Protections
Second Citizens
Fluoride Conference Hears from NRC Panel Members
New Leaders Want
Your Input
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
NTEU CHAPTER 280 PRESENTS THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION SESSIONS...
FLEXITOUR/4-10 – NTEU280 has worked hard to bring these options to our bargaining unit employees. We can help you figure out which work schedule may work best for you. Come learn all about the new work schedule options available to you! Dates: October 17th (Potomac Yard – [room to be announced); October 24th (Federal Triangle – [room to be announced]) at noon.
PARS – NTEU National and NTEU280 have negotiated a PARS agreement that is fairer to employees and that will result in better employee/manager interaction and feedback. Come hear updated information about PARS before you receive your 2006 review. Know your rights as an employee as you head into your review! Dates: October 3rd at noon (Potomac Yard [North 4830]). November 7th at noon Federal Triangle – [room to be announced]).
NRC PANEL MEMBERS TO SPEAK AT UNION MEETING Three members of the National Research Council panel that issued a report last March on EPA’s drinking water standards for fluoride will speak at a meeting of NTEU Chapter 280 on October 12 at 1 p.m. in 1153 EPA East. Drs. Hardy Limeback, Kathy Thiessen and Robert Isaacson, along with Dr. Paul Connett will speak on their work studying fluoride toxicity. A panel discussion and a question and answer session will follow. All Chapter members are asked to attend, along with any other interested employees.
X-BYTES
Executive Vice
President
Employee Illness in
EPA’s “Green” Building - What To Do If You Feel Ill/Looking into the Brownfield
Remediation
NTEU Chapter 280 and OPP and OSWER Program Management have entered into
an informal agreement for accommodating those employees who have experienced illness from working
at EPA’s new “Green” building at Potomac Yard.
But first, for those of you not working at Potomac Yard and not getting
the e-mail traffic on this subject, here’s some of the history.
Soon after
On August 2, 2006, the Unions arranged a meeting between
affected Potomac Yard employees and representatives of the Facilities Management
and Services Division (FMSD) and the Safety, Health, and Environmental
Management Division (SHEMD) of the Office of Administration and Resource
Management (OARM). Approximately two
dozen Potomac Yard employees attended this meeting. Not all affected employees were able to
attend because of schedule conflicts and it is likely that there were others
who were unaware that symptoms they were experiencing were related to chemicals
or other substances originating from the building. Employee complaints ranged from mild eye,
nose, and breathing irritations to severe illness requiring extensive
medication in order for the employee to continue breathing. Many complained of solvent and other odors
and construction being done during work hours.
Still others complained of dust from nearby construction sites. I had entered the building through one tower,
but exited from the other tower. As I
left, I noticed a distinct solvent odor in the elevator lobby.
After that meeting, Dr. Cate
Jenkins of OSWER conducted a ventilation survey of the Potomac Yard
building. She noted a number of
malfunctions including inoperable parking garage ventilation fans and doors
which, being left open rather than closed, reduced the
efficiency of the positive pressure ventilation designed to keep the building
from being infiltrated by outside dust and fumes. I forwarded Dr. Jenkins’s report to EPA FMSD.
As a result of these interactions, Rich Lemley, Director of the Office of Administrative Services
of OARM, and I worked together to institute a number of changes to improve the
situation. For one, no more construction work is to be
done in the building during working hours.
In addition, the malfunctions noted in the ventilation survey conducted by Dr.
Jenkins have reportedly been corrected.
Finally, Mr. Lemley informed me that he asked
the building management to keep the ventilation running continuously throughout
the day every day for at least a week in order to purge the building of any
off-gassing substances. Reports from employees
seem to indicate that the odors have dissipated, so this remedy seems to be
effective. In the event that you see
construction taking place during the day, notice that fans are inoperable
and/or that doors to the outside are open, or detect offensive odors and/or
irritants, please let me know immediately.
Although on a number of occasions, I have requested that I
be invited to attend meetings with the building owners and EPA management at
Potomac Yard, these requests have been denied.
On two occasions, I requested that soil from the grounds around the
building be sampled in order to ascertain, for everyone’s peace of mind, that
this former Brownfield site was, indeed, properly remediated. Both of my requests for analyzing soil
samples were denied. Without data to
demonstrate that the Potomac Yard site was properly remediated,
it is not completely clear that employee illness is not due to toxins from the
site rather than poor indoor air quality due to building start-up/move in. While I hope it is the latter, I have not
ruled out the former.
Meanwhile, union representatives tried to persuade EPA
management to permit employees who are ill as a result of working at Potomac
Yard to be immediately removed from the site and permitted to work at an alternate
work location. Current procedures
require that an employee provide medical documentation before being permitted
to report to work at an alternate location.
I proposed an expedited procedure by which affected employees could
receive immediate relief from exposure to workplace chemicals and irritants by
being permitted to work at home or in other EPA space before having to provide
medical documentation of illness. In a
written response from OPP’s Marty Monell,
apparently written by someone other than Ms. Monell,
my initial request for this expedited procedure was denied. I say “apparently” because when I met with
Ms. Monell after I received her written denial, Ms. Monell’s response to my initial proposal was
favorable. In the written response, I was
informed that there were already plenty of procedures in place to deal with
this situation, such as reasonable accommodation, medical flexiplace,
and episodic flexiplace. I elevated the rejected request for an
expedited process to grant immediate relief to employees who were suffering
from the air quality at Potomac Yard to EPA Administrator, Steve Johnson. I received a written response from OARM
Assistant Administrator, Luis Luna, reiterating that there is already a process
in place to deal with employees experiencing illness while at the workplace as
well as what I would characterize as “canned verbiage” about how wonderful the
Potomac Yard building is. Mr. Luna also
discussed evidence, based on indoor air quality testing conducted before and
after EPA occupied the Potomac Yard facility, that indicated that levels of
carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulates, Total volatile organic
compounds, formaldehyde, and 4-phenylcyclohexene were all below
OSHA-established occupational exposure limits.
However, if solvent odors are so easily detected by so many who enter
and work at the building, then the fact that the building is a green building
that meets OSHA limits for the chemical substances tested doesn’t mitigate
concerns about illness and irriatation experienced by
dozens of employees while at work.
What to Do if the Building is
Making You Sick
I was, however, able to come to an informal resolution with
OPP’s Marty Monell and
later a similar resolution with OSWER’s Renee Wynn on
what steps you can take if you are experiencing health problems while working
in the building at Potomac Yard. Your
first step is to apply to your immediate supervisor for reasonable
accommodation, medical flexiplace, or episodic flexiplace. Your
immediate supervisor should either grant the accommodation or respond to you in
writing within 15 days as to why your request is being denied. If you have a problem getting an
accommodation, you should immediately report it to your
Marty Monell and later Renee Wynn
proved to be “Managers Plus”. In
discussing the process and procedures to be followed, Marty’s compassionate
idea was that the affected employee could work at home first and once
removed from the irritating/toxic environment, come up with medical
documentation after being removed.
The idea was enthusiastically seconded by Renee Wynn later in a separate
meeting.
Removing people immediately from the
irritating environment. This is not only a compassionate idea, but a
wise and sensible idea as well. Most
people are not genetically predisposed to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS),
but for those who are, with immediate removal, they will probably recover. If MCS is allowed to progress into more
advanced stages, however, the life-long illness is often irreversible, causing
years of suffering and sometimes even premature death.
Is the PY Site Improperly Remediated?
Since
EPA management has not provided
me with irrefutable evidence to show that the soil on which the new building is
built is no longer contamimated, I have some doubt
about whether the Potomac Yard site was properly remediated. EPA management refuses to permit the Unions
to take soil samples and have them analyzed.
In addition, EPA Management has barred the Headquarter’s
Unions from attending meetings at which employee illnesses resulting from
working in the building are discussed between EPA management and the building
owners. (If invited, I would at least
bring along a toxicologist.) Furthermore,
whenever questions are raised about the site’s history of chemical
contamination, the responses have focused primarily on the attributes of the
green building and some general information about investigations by government
environmental agencies regarding cleanup of the Potomac Yard site
I am currently engaged in getting some of EPA’s scientists
to examine the remediation data. After
the scientific reviews are completed, I will report back to the readership the
conclusions of the scientific experts.
Again,
it is my hope that the problems in PY are routine building startup/move-in
problems. I have worked hard on
resolving these problems and if you have any suggestions, please call me or
send me a note. I would like to thank my
colleague, Steve Shapiro, President of AFGE 3331, for all his help and
expertise and for his cooperation in trying to address these problems. The Potomac Yard situation has united the Headquarter’s Unions.
How OPP Employees Can Include Information on Title, Letters, and Technical Background in the EPA Locator Directory Following the recent move to Potomac Yards, an OPP employee brought
to NTEU's
attention that the EPA locator directory lists
titles (letters) for employees in the EPA Office of Research and Development, but not
for other EPA offices. In partnership with OPP management, NTEU
found that this information could easily be listed adjacent to the names of EPA
employees who request it. For OPP employees, all that is required to
have your title listed in the EPA locater data base is to send an
e-mail request that includes your title to Betty Plummer of the
ECS Team. Her
additional contact information is listed below.
If you have any problem, please contact Bill Evans of NTEU Chapter 280.
Betty
Plummer
Information
Systems Analyst
Mail
Code 2832WTC
202-272-0120
Fax
272-0242
The
NINE EPA UNIONS SPEAK OUT ON FOOD QUALITY PROTECTION ACT ISSUE by Bill Hirzy
(This is the first in a series of articles that will explain how and why NTEU Chapter 280 – and other EPA unions – engage in actions touching on programmatic issues that face the Agency’s employees in their day-to-day work.)
Last January, a Region 8 EPA toxicologist, with whom I had worked some years ago, telephoned me with concerns over whether EPA would adhere to the requirements of the Food Quality Protection Act with respect to re-registration of organophosphate and carbamate pesticides. Under the FQPA, EPA was required to complete re-registration actions on these and other pesticides by August 3, 2006.
Those concerns centered around requirements in the Act that a safety factor of ten be applied to risk control measures to protect children and unborn fetuses unless there is a complete and reliable data base showing that this age group is no more susceptible to the toxic effects of a pesticide than adults. (More details on specific concerns are given below.)
Why should NTEU Chapter 280 at Headquarters spend time on the concerns of a Region 8 employee? The reason is that those concerns about EPA’s decisions on re-registration of organophospahate and carbamate pesticides coincided with ones raised by headquarters employees in the Pesticide Office and those of the Agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) about OPP’s implementation of the FQPA.
In a recent report issued by EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, Measuring the Impact of the Food Quality Protection Act: Challenges and Opportunities, issued August 1, 2006, OIG reported, “Although EPA had made progress in implementing the requirements of the FQPA, we found that OPP has primarily measured its success and the impact of FQPA by adherence to its re-registration schedule rather than by reductions in risk to children’s health. The measures used by OPP generally indicate actions taken, instead of environmental or human health outcomes achieved. OPP lacks outcome measures to assess the specific impact of those actions on the health of children and others. OPP has recently taken steps to develop outcome measures, but significant challenges remain.”
Concerns about the risk assessment on one of the organophosphates, malathion, were raised by Dr. Brian Dementi, recently retired EPA Headquarters Toxicologist and national OPP expert on that pesticide. NTEU Chapter 280 had been representing Dr. Dementi in his on-going disagreements with the Office of Pesticide Programs over how the Office was dealing with malathion risks under OPP’s FQPA re-registration review. Dr. Dementi’s concerns regarding OPP’s risk assessment for malathion are manifold, including: (1) failure to adequately consider potential developmental neurotoxicity concerns because results of developmental neurotoxicity studies fail to show a no-effect level in young animals; (2) suspicious changes in EPA’s carcinogenicity classification from an initial classification indicating malathion to have higher potential to be a carcinogen to a subsequent classification indicating malathion to have lower carcinogenic potential; and (3) failure to account for degradation of malathion to more toxic substances while in storage.
After the Region 8 toxicologist contacted me, I informed our Executive Board and received authorization to proceed with working with that person and Dr. Dementi on this issue.
Region 8 employees are represented by American Federation of Government Employees Local 3607. Late in 2005, the AFGE Council of EPA unions, at the initiative of Local 3607 President, Dave Christianson, asked the AFGE National President to submit comments on EPA’s proposed Human Testing Rule, asking for a number of changes in EPA’s policy. Since the AFGE unions had already weighed in on EPA/OPP activities, the Region 8 toxicologist and Dave Christianson thought another multi-union submission on this related matter could have a beneficial effect on EPA’s compliance with the FQPA and, as a result, on public health. After several conversations among the unions and Dr. Dementi, a letter was drafted outlining the points the two toxicologists wanted to make. At this juncture, AFGE Local 3331 President, Steve Shapiro, joined the discussions because of concerns that some of his bargaining unit members were expressing to him about the pesticide re-registration decisions and the draft letter was modified to take these into account.
The coalition of EPA’s labor unions have a weekly conference call during which issues of mutual interest are aired. At this weekly conference call, this subject was brought up for discussion. Several drafts of a letter from the unions to Administrator Johnson were circulated among coalition members, and finally three NTEU Chapters, five AFGE Locals and a Local of Engineers and Scientists of California signed on. One other AFGE Local later expressed support after the signed letter had been sent. The full text of the letter can be read on NTEU Chapter 280’s website, www.nteu280.org/currentissues.
The leadership of Local 3607’s Dave Christianson was vital in crafting the letter and in securing other AFGE unions’ support for it.
The essence of the letter is that EPA does not have a complete and reliable data base on the subject pesticides, especially regarding developmental neurotoxicity, and so ought not to proceed with re-registration without appropriate safety factors, and that too much emphasis on reaching consensus with the regulated community and the Department of Agriculture is resulting in pressure on staff to “go easy” on regulatory controls on these pesticides. The letter invoked EPA’s Principles of Scientific integrity and also asked for adequate protection for farm workers and their children and for similar action on all industrial and commercial chemicals subject to laws that EPA administers.
The letter caught the attention of Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and Pesticide Action Network North America
(PANNA), and these organizations saw to it that the letter came to the
attention of the media. Articles on the letter have appeared in the Wall Street
Journal, the New York Times, Scientific American magazine and a number of other
newspapers and trade journals. A broadcast on National Public Radio’s Marketplace featured interviews on the
letter, and other journalists continue to express interest in the subject. PEER’s Executive
Director, Jeff Ruch, said on the Marketplace broadcast that it was, “… unusual that the unions are taking on these
issues of scientific integrity and intellectual candor, and it bodes well
because it means that you have an effective way for the scientists to
communicate with the people they actually work with, the American public.” (Ed. Note: See the
article immediately below and the article following that with its editorial
remarks by Arthur Chiu and Bill Hirzy, and tell us what you think. We can
withold names from Letters to the Editor upon request, but we will not print
items sent in anonymously.)
BUSH DECLARES ECO-WHISTLEBLOWER LAW VOID FOR EPA
EMPLOYEES — Repeal of Clean Water Act Protections by Invoking
“Sovereign Stealth Immunity”
For Immediate Release: September 4, 2006
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337
(Editor’s
Note: A bargaining unit member asked NTEU Chapter 280 to include this news
release in Inside the Fishbowl. Permission to include this news release
was granted by the author, Carol Goldberg.)
Citing an “unpublished opinion of the [Attorney
General’s] Office of Legal Counsel,” the Secretary of Labor’s Administrative
Review Board has ruled federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower
claims under the Clean Water Act. The opinion invoked the ancient doctrine of
sovereign immunity which is based on the old English legal maxim that “The King
Can Do No Wrong.” It is an absolute defense to any legal action unless the
“sovereign” consents to be sued.
The opinion and the ruling reverse nearly two decades of
precedent. Approximately 170,000 federal employees working within environmental
agencies are affected by the loss of whistleblower rights.
“The Bush administration is engineering the stealth
repeal of whistleblower protections,” stated PEER General Counsel Richard
Condit, who had won several of the earlier cases applying environmental
whistleblower protections to federal specialists. “The use of an unpublished
opinion to change official interpretations is a giant step backward to the days
of the secret Star Chamber.” PEER ultimately obtained a copy of the opinion
under the Freedom of Information Act.
At the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) is taking a more extreme position that absolutely no environmental
laws protect its employees from reprisal. EPA’s stance would place the
provisions of all major federal environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act
and the Safe Drinking Water Act, beyond the reach of federal employees seeking
legal protection for good faith efforts to enforce or implement the
anti-pollution provisions contained within those laws.
These actions arose in the case of Sharyn
Erickson, an EPA employee who had reported problems with agency contracts for
toxic clean-ups. After conducting a hearing, an administrative law judge called
EPA’s conduct “reprehensible” and awarded Erickson $225,000 in punitive damages
but the Labor Secretary overturned that ruling.
“It is astonishing for the Bush administration to now
suddenly claim that it is above the law,” said PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein, who is handling Erickson’s appeal of the Labor
Secretary’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit based in
Congress is now debating Clean Water Act clarifications
in the wake of a confusing U.S. Supreme Court decision (Rapanos
et ux., et al. v.
SECOND PEOPLES’ ONFERENCE ON FLUORIDE CONFERENCE by Bill Hirzy.
Editorial Remarks remarks by Arthur Chiu and Bill Hirzy The material below is a summary by one of us (Bill Hirzy) of an article by Bette Hileman writing in the September 4, 2006 edition of Chemical and Engineering News, (C&EN) along with my own input as a participant in the conference. It appears in the Inside the Fishbowl as part of the series of articles on scientific integrity mentioned in the accompanying article on the multi-union letter to Administrator Johnson about organophosphate pesticides and the Food Quality Protection Act. We feel it is important to keep in front of EPA professionals the idea that they have a right and an obligation to, as our Civil Service oath says, “….defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” The way we do this is to fight against attempts by anyone to pervert or to ignore science as our Agency discharges its duty to administer environmental law. We feel it is important to keep reminding ourselves of this right and obligation as a matter of not only defending the Constitution, but also of defending the honor of the Civil Service.
The C&EN article is at this URL
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/84/8436gov1.html
The Second Citizens’ Conference on Fluoride was held at St. Lawrence
University,
The NRC report did not directly address water fluoridation, but the NRC
committee members who made presentations all pointed out how their work does
indeed have implications for that program. The NRC committee members who spoke
were Hardy Limeback, Chairman of Preventive Dentistry
at the University of Toronto, Kathleen Thiessen a
senior scientist at SENES Oak Ridge Inc., Center for Risk Analysis and Robert
Isaacson, professor emeritus of psychology, State University of New York at
Binghamton.
Dr. Limeback spoke of his study of
fluoride levels in bone from fluoridated
adult teeth fracture more easily."
Dr. Kathleen M. Thiessen presented evidence that
water with about 1 mg/L of fluoride or more presents potential risks to the
thyroid gland. She said that the average adult exposure to fluoridated water
results in dose rates of about 0.03 mg/kg/day, levels at which one sees thyroid
effects in some individuals with deficient iodine in their diets.
She pointed out that a low level of thyroid hormone can increase the risk of
heart disease, high cholesterol levels, depression, and, for pregnant women,
decreased intelligence of
offspring. Infants fed formulas made with fluoridated water are also at special
risk, she said "Speaking
as a scientist, based on the information I have looked at, with
fluoridated water, we're dealing with uncontrolled and unmonitored exposures
to an agent that is known to have adverse effects."
Dr. Robert L. Isaacson, who is co-author with EPA toxicologist Karl Jensen of a
seminal 1998 paper in Brain Research,
said that his study showed fluoride at levels found in drinking water affects
brain function in adults. He noted that fluoride impairs the brain's ability to
perform signaling functions, with the consequence that "messages that are
passed along the many pathways are likely to be incomplete or wrong.” Fluoride disrupts the creation and breakdown
of neurofilaments in the axons of neurons, and
interferes with both primary and secondary signaling in the nervous system, he
said. He explained that his work showed that fluoride may also increase the
number of plaques and tangles in the brains of adults similar to the abnormalities
found in Alzheimer's patients. He noted epidemiology work from
Michael Connett, son of Paul Connett
and Director of the
Fluoride Action spoke on the flaws in the science used to justify EPA’s registration of sulfuryl
fluoride as a fumigant for food stuffs. He pointed out as a major flaw EPA’s
reliance on the 4 mg/L drinking water Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG) to
justify higher tolerances for fluoride required for sulfuryl
fluoride’s registration. That MCLG has now been shown by the NRC Report not to
be protective of public health. He
displayed calculations showing how this led to allowable reference doses for
children and infants that are ten times higher than for adults, the exact
opposite of what the Food Quality Protection Act calls for. (Also regarding sulfuryl fluoride, I cited in my presentation a letter that
the union sent to the Office of Pesticide Programs on the subject asking that
EPA rescind the tolerances related to sulfuryl
fluoride use.)
In an attempt to have an exchange of views on water fluoridation, Dr. Connett invited William R. Maas, director of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) Division of Oral Health, to the meeting, but he declined. You may recall that at EPA’s Science Forum 2003 similar invitations to a number of organizations and individuals promoting fluoridation participate in a debate with Paul Connett were not accepted. Open discussion of the issue is not how fluoridation proponents conduct business.
NEW LEADERS SEEK YOUR INPUT As a result of the
recent NTEU Chapter 280 election, many new faces are part of this Chapter’s
Executive Board. With these new faces
come new ideas about the direction that our chapter should take. This Executive Board understands that our
primary role is to serve the members of this bargaining unit. Most recently, members of the Executive Board successfully
led negotiations and finalized the flexi-tour and 4/10 agreement. These
negotiations take a lot of time and energy and the board believes that, to
better serve this bargaining unit, we need your input in identifying the
issues, activities, and programs you think are most important for the
The primary impetus for
establishing a union chapter for professional employees of EPA headquarters in
1983 was that some professional employees in EPA felt pressure by their
managers to prepare documents that ignored or distorted scientific facts in
order to support predetermined environmental regulatory decisions. These brave individuals put their careers at
risk and established the first union chapter for professional employees, Local
2050 of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), to protect
employees from overzealous managers who appeared to be more concerned about
advancing their own careers than protecting public health and the environment.
One result achieved by our union was to establish a modicum of professional
ethics for EPA, now known as the "Principles of Scientific
Integrity". (For more information
on the History of EPA’s union that represents headquarters professional
employees and on the principles of scientific integrity, refer to NTEU Chapter
280’s website at www.nteu280.org.). Since its inception in 1983, this union
broadened its mission to focus on traditional workplace issues, such as
protecting the rights of bargaining unit members, clarifying matters related to
the workplace, and representing bargaining unit members in grievances.
To clarify matters related to
the workplace, EPA and NTEU have negotiated a collective bargaining agreement
covering employees in the professional bargaining unit. This collective
bargaining agreement establishes procedures for employees and managers to
follow regarding many workplace matters including, but not limited to, employee
rights; rights of the employer; union rights; employee performance evaluation;
personnel records and access to information; labor management relations;
disciplinary actions; transit subsidies; and negotiated grievance
procedures. This union
also represents bargaining unit members in grievances, either through an
informal process or, if that is not possible, through the formal grievance
process. We have a high rate of
success in resolving grievances initiated by employees in our bargaining unit.
To find out more about the collective bargaining agreement and the grievance
process, access our website at www.nteu280.org.
Since
its formation, the EPA union to represent professional employees has worked
hard to establish important employee benefits, such as:
•
compressed
work schedule
•
transit
subsidy
•
flexi-place
•
fitness
centers
•
numerous
GS-14 positions
•
non-supervisory
GS-15 positions
•
alternative
work schedules (4/10 and Flexi-tour)
•
on-site
day-care facilities
Many other federal agencies do
not enjoy these benefits. This chapter
of NTEU has been a leader in making these benefits available to EPA employees
in our bargaining unit.
To continue providing you with these benefits and protect
your rights,
NTEU needs you to become an active member. It has been difficult to negotiate the
benefits we have won without at least a majority of the bargaining unit as
dues-paying members.
Many of you who enjoy these
benefits tell us that the dues are too high and that you can still enjoy the
benefits without paying dues. If you
think the dues are too costly, please consider this. Dues are set by the NTEU national office, and a large
fraction of money goes to run that office. The NTEU national office is an
effective voice for federal employees that speaks to
Congress, working every day for your maximum cost of living increases, for fair
rules on contracting, and for your right to have union representation in your
dealings with management.
In addition, becoming a
dues-paying member permits you to have a strong voice in setting our chapter's
priorities and goals. Only dues-paying members get to vote in chapter
elections, to vote on this chapter’s policies, and to ratify or reject
negotiated agreements.
Enough said. We want to hear how
you want us to serve you. Please let us
know what direction you want NTEU Chapter 280 to take and how you suggest we
prioritize our efforts. Your input
regarding how you would like us to serve you will help us to establish our
priorities. Regarding matters for which
we represent you, in what order would you rank issues such as maintaining
employee benefits, pursuing additional employee benefits, addressing
environmental concerns that affect employees at the workplace, negotiating
performance appraisal systems (i.e., PARS), and maintaining the principles of
scientific integrity regarding chemicals regulated by the Agency, as well as
other issues? What topics would you like
to see us write about in our newsletter?
If you are interested in helping
yourself and your fellow workers by joining us, please contact your local
steward or any of us at the local office.
Our phone numbers are listed at the beginning of this newsletter.