The Merit Systems Protection Board is making headway in containing an unprecedented surge in appeals fueled by Defense Department employee furloughs. As of yesterday, the board had docketed almost 16,600 appeals, or about half the total. It now expects to have most of the remainder done soon after Labor Day and then begin the adjudication process for the DoD cases, according to the latest update posted on its home page. Challenges of sequester-related furloughs–most of them from Defense Department workers–have swollen the MSPB’s workload to roughly five times its normal level. Consider some numbers provided today by Board Clerk William…
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For anyone who’s keeping count, the total number of appeals filed with the Merit Systems Protection Board for fiscal 2013 (as of close of business yesterday) stood at 34,210, or close to five times the agency’s normal yearly caseload. Of those, around 29,000 (or 85 percent), are furlough-related, Board Clerk Bill Spencer said in an email.
Furlough-related appeals continue to pour into the Merit Systems Protection Board. As of this morning, the number of docketed appeals stood at 4,647, up about 50 percent in a week. And that number doesn’t include another 4,587 cases that have been received but are not yet docketed—most of which are likely furlough-related as well, Clerk William Spencer said in an email. The surge temporarily knocked out the board’s electronic “e-Appeal” service a few times this week. It has also prompted the board to post the following message on its homepage: “Due to the unprecedented large volume of furlough appeals being…
Federal employees found to have violated the Hatch Act’s prohibitions on partisan politicking would face penalties ranging from a reprimand to a five-year ban from federal employment under proposed changes published in today’s Federal Register. Up to now, the only sanction has been automatic firing, unless the three-member Merit Systems Protection Board unanimously agreed to impose a 30-day unpaid suspension. As a result, agencies were sometimes reluctant to pursue minor infractions. The Office of Personnel Management’s proposed changes follow up on the framework laid out in the Hatch Act Modernization Act, which Congress approved last December in part to give…
With the Defense Department set to lay out a final furlough policy today, the Merit Systems Protection Board has rejected a union’s request for a heads-up on how it could decide appeals from employees who challenge the decision to force them to take unpaid time off. “Under federal law, the Board is prohibited from issuing advisory opinions,” the agency’s clerk, William Spencer, said in a letter yesterday to Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers that cites the relevant provision of federal law. This afternoon, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to officially tell DoD…
With the Defense Department expected to announce a final furlough policy as early as this week, a union has asked the Merit Systems Protection Board for a heads-up on how it would rule on behalf of DoD employees who appeal decisions to make them take unpaid time off. Issuing “a pre-emptive statement of opinion” on whether those employees could win appeals would save the board “from deciding thousands of cases that would likely come,” Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said in last week’s letter to MSPB chairman Susan Grundmann. A board spokesman declined…
There was some noteworthy news out of the judiciary today: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has thrown out a three-judge panel’s decision from last year that would curtail federal employees’ ability to challenge agencies’ decisions on suitability to hold certain national security jobs. Instead, the full court of about 15 judges will rehear the case, with the first round of briefs due in early March, according to the four-page order. As Federal Times reported last year, the case dates back to 2009 when Defense Department agencies barred two employees–one a GS-5, the other a GS-7–from jobs involving access to “sensitive” information. The two sought recourse from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which…
First, the good news; The percentage of federal employees claiming direct knowledge of waste or illegality in their agencies has dropped by more than one-third during the last two decades, according to a new report on whistleblowing. The bad news: Among those employees who reported alleged problems, there was an increase between 1992 and 2010 in the proportion who said they experienced at least a threat of reprisal for speaking out. The numbers come from a lengthy report released this week by the Merit Systems Protection Board. The report draws on a wealth of data from MSPB surveys of thousands of…