As an Army brat, Octavia Hall has always been around public service. She spent most of her life in Germany bouncing around several bases. Hall said it was both her family and her community who encouraged her to serve. “When I went out to the bus stop, I remember the soldiers coming over to talk to us about going to school, getting a good education, asking about our career goals. They contributed a lot to my wanting to serve,” Hall said. As military families do, Hall’s family moved again, this time to Maryland. In high school she was active in cheerleading and a singing-show group she compared to the…
Browsing: AFGE
Federal employees’ Thrift Savings Plan accounts could end up collateral damage in the push to hike federal employees’ pension contributions, the American Federation of Government Employees said yesterday. At Monday’s meeting with the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, AFGE public policy director Jacque Simon asked for more granular, grade-by-grade data on TSP contribution rates. Simon said she wants to know whether lower-paid federal employees are pulling back on their TSP contributions in response to proposals to increase pension contributions by anywhere from 1.2 percent to 5 percent. “It’s going to be increasingly important to have access to data like that,”…
J. David Cox, the national secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees, on May 9 will receive the Yitzhak Rabin Public Service Award. The American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center is giving Cox the award — which honors labor leaders and was named for the slain Israeli prime minister, labor minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner — to honor his years spent organizing federal employees at the Veterans Affairs Department and Transportation Security Administration. Cox said he helped organize at least 75,000 VA employees in some 100 elections nationwide over the last 16 years, as well as another…
The American Federation of Government Employees today dug up a gem of a recruitment video from its archives. Behold: “AFGE and Me.” It’s got literally everything one could hope for. Saxophone riffs paired with footage of union members playing a cheap toy sax. Elephants and horse-riding Border Patrol agents. Hawaiian shirts. Astronauts. Little kids. And best of all, a maddeningly addictive earworm of a chorus. It looks and sounds 80’s-tastic, but AFGE spokesman Tim Kauffman says it was actually made around 1994. So, who wants to make the inevitable dubstep remix?
The American Federation of Government Employees is stepping up its campaign against House Republicans who want to further freeze federal pay to cover the cost of a payroll tax extension. AFGE this weekend will launch a nationwide series of television and print ads titled “Explain It To Me, GOP,” that wonder how cutting federal pay and benefits will help the economy recover. The ad seeks to put a face on federal employees who lawmakers often discuss in general — and sometimes disparaging — terms. It features members of AFGE locals — a Minnesota Veterans Affairs Department nurse, an electronics worker…
John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, is worried that the proposed two-year federal pay freeze is just the beginning of the bad news for federal employees. In a video AFGE just posted, Gage said he will meet with the administration later this week, and “I’m expecting the other shoe to drop with something about our pensions coming up.” Gage also uses the video to attack everything about the pay freeze, from the figures used to derive the expected savings, to Obama’s negotiating strategy, the assumption that federal employees should bear some of the recession’s burden,…
The Chicago regional director of the Federal Labor Relations Authority today denied the American Federation of Government Employees’ bid for an election to determine which union will represent Transportation Security Administration employees. The regional FLRA upheld its previous determination that because TSA screeners do not have collective bargaining rights, it has no jurisdiction to process the petition for an election. AFGE said it will appeal to the full FLRA within 60 days. AFGE and the National Treasury Employees Union are each seeking to represent roughly 40,000 TSA screeners. NTEU has filed a similar petition with FLRA.
The American Federation of Government Employees yesterday re-elected John Gage to a third three-year term as national president. “There is much to do on behalf of federal workers,” Gage told delegates to AFGE’s national convention in Reno after he was sworn in Aug. 27. “Our focus is now on the midterm congressional elections and making sure the American people have the public services they deserve. We plan to help elect a Congress with men and women who are actually responsive to the needs of the American people, particularly the nation’s working families.” Delegates also re-elected J. David Cox as national…
The American Federation of Government Employees wasted no time in firing back at the Defense Business Board task group’s final report on the National Security Personnel System, and its recommendation to rebuild — but not abolish — the controversial system. In a letter sent to the task group less than an hour after the report was posted online, AFGE President John Gage said the decision to drastically reform NSPS left the union “perplexed, angered and frustrated:” The recommendation to keep NSPS is illogical and does not flow from your findings. The task group has miscalculated the intensity of hatred toward…
 Update: AFGE has also sent yours truly this point-by-point refutation of industry’s opposition to the CLEAN UP Act. We told you earlier today about a Republican bill introduced yesterday to promote the outsourcing of commercial work performed by federal employees. Now enter the American Federation of Government Employees, a privatization foe, announcing it has taken “its contracting out reform campaign to the House of Representatives.” In a June 4 news release, union boss John Gage applauded the introduction of Mikulski’s CLEAN UP Act in the House by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. Gage said: The CLEAN UP Act is vital to any serious effort to…