After Utah lawmakers passed a bill banning public employee unions from engaging in collective bargaining and from organizing work on state time, Sen. Mike Lee is aiming to take similar steps on the national level.
This week, the Utah Republican reintroduced the No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act, which would rescind a provision that allows federal employees to engage in limited forms of union work on government time.
“Federal workers whose salaries are paid by the tax dollars of American families should be spending hours on the clock doing their jobs, not union business,” Lee said in a statement. “The practice of ‘official time’ costs taxpayers millions of man hours per year, and we should get rid of it.”
And while his bill would not go so far as to ban collective bargaining for public employees, as Utah recently did, Lee and other supporters of the legislation see it as a step in the same direction.
“Utah took a great step forward in terms of retaking control over its budget and its government processes,” National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad said in a recent interview. “We’d like to see every state do it. We’d like to see the federal government do it for federal employees as well.”
Lee echoed this sentiment in his statement Wednesday.
“Even FDR recognized that public-sector employees shouldn’t be able to collectively bargain against their employers, because their employers are the American people,” he said. “We shouldn’t have public servants working to get leverage over their own state or country.”
Currently, federal employees are allowed to use official time to “perform representational duties,” which could include bargaining over their terms and conditions of employment or representing colleagues in grievance or disciplinary situations, according to a fact sheet released by the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents more than 800,000 federal workers.
As AFGE noted, however, union members may not use official time to conduct union business, “such as soliciting members, holding internal union meetings, electing union officers or engaging in partisan political activities.”
The practice of official time, Lee said in a release when he first introduced the bill in the past Congress, allows federal employees to “engage in activities that advance the cause of a union in lieu of actually working.”
“Federal employees can engage in union-related activities, if they so choose,” Lee added, “on their own time and at their own expense.”
The union counters that official time actually saves taxpayers money.
“Official time is less expensive for taxpayers in the long run because it helps resolve conflicts that arise in the workplace without resorting to expensive and time-consuming administrative or legal procedures,” AFGE said in an FAQ.
AFGE did not respond to a request for comment specifically about Lee’s bill.
The reintroduction of the legislation comes after the firing and layoffs of thousands of federal workers in recent weeks, and after President Donald Trump issued an executive order last month that stripped many federal workers of bargaining rights for purported “national security” reasons. Employees at the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce, along with Homeland Security workers who oversee border enforcement, were affected by the order.
Asked how he would respond to federal employees who may feel that their union rights are particularly vital in light of these recent moves, Mourad said, “I would say to them that working for the government is not a right, it’s a privilege, and when you’re working for the public, you don’t have a right to organize against the public.”
Mourad added, however, that he does not expect the bill to pass during this congressional session.
“In a bill like this, we’re always building for the future,” he said. “Passing something like this … requires breaking a filibuster in the Senate, and so that means 60 votes with 54 Republicans. I would say 54 [votes] is probably the high water mark. This is not the sort of bill that I can conceive of many if any Democrats voting for.”
Since taking office in 2011, Lee has introduced 525 bills. Six have passed and become law as stand-alone legislation.
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