CHAPTER 49 NEWS
JANUARY 18, 2002

 
 

GILES FILES

By
Duncan Giles
President
NTEU Chapter 49

On this and that….First, I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season.  Mine was pretty good until my 8 1/2 year old daughter did a gainer off her scooter on January 2nd and fractured her upper arm.  She will have to have it in a sling for 6 weeks but it doesn’t impede her from playing in the snow much.

On to work issues.  For those of you out in the field, they have signed the national walk-in agreement.  Chapter 49 sat down with management late last week on this and we are hoping to have a signed agreement by the time you read this.  It should be similar to last year except that TCOs will now be in the mix.  At the Call Site, we are working several different things including working with management to try and reward employees for doing good work.  The latest initiative kicked off on the 11th.  We thought this was quite an enlightened step to try that instead of harping on small errors that don’t really change the correctness of a given response.

We are also in the first stages of trying to determine if there is indeed an air quality problem at the Call Site (as many of us suspect).  If we do find something, we can quantify it and rectify it as soon as possible.  Look for a desk drop on this issue by the end of the month.

I would also like to take this time to recognize a few Chapter 49 stewards for some excellent work in the past several weeks. - Karen McKibben  for her help on Walk-in support, Deloris Bell, Anne Brown, Shawn Kennedy & Donna Wolfe for POD move issues, Susan Wright & Fred Mecum for scheduling issues. We are going to try and recognize stewards in this column from now on for their fine work. Without their efforts, we would all be in trouble.

Finally, Chapter 49 has had several members named to national teams in the last month, including Karen Bennel from SPB, Pam Fruggerio from TAO and Rex LeMasters from the Call Site.
In addition, I was recently named to the SPEC National Partnership Council (an appointment that was basically thrust at me).

If you would like to contact me personally
from your home computer, my home e mail address is
dbgiles@excite.com
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2002 PAY RAISE

The Bush administration waited until the last possible moment to announce the pay charts for 2002, and most of Indiana once again finds itself on the bottom of the pay hike heap.  The good news is that those working out of the Merrillville office will receive a 5.05% wage increase in 2002, since their pay is tied to the Chicago area.  The bad news is that the rest of the state (including the Indianapolis area) will get the lowest raise available, 4.52%.  All federal workers get an across-the-board raise of 3.6%, with one additional percent allocated to locality pay.  Many are under the misconception that the locality pay is based on the cost of living, but that is not the case.  It is based on the cost of labor.  This results in a number of imbalances.  A local group in Los Angeles asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to consider changing the formula to factor in the cost of living.  But according to the Federal Times, the response was not positive.  “The cost of living is not always directly proportional to the cost of labor,” OPM director Kay Coles James wrote in response to the LA letter.  “If our goal is to become competitive within the local labor market, we believe it will be appropriate to continue to focus primarily on labor market comparisons, rather than the cost of living.“

Meanwhile, the 4.6% average pay raise is certainly welcome, but NTEU says little meaningful progress has been made in closing the widening gap between private sector and federal government pay.  NTEU National President Colleen Kelley, a member of the Federal Salary Council, says this year’s raise doesn’t come close to addressing the underlying problem.  “Everyone who has looked at the government’s human capital crisis, from the General Accounting Office (GAO), to congressional committees, to public interest groups and others,” Kelley said, “has identified low pay as the major contributing factor” in government’s ability to recruit and retain the kind
of workers the public expects.
 

MLK HOLIDAY Jan. 21

Monday, January 21st, marks the federal holiday celebrating the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King.  NTEU Chapter 49 joins NTEU chapters around the nation in observance of this occasion with respect and thanks for the many contributions Dr. King made to the cause of justice, freedom and dignity for all.  Take some time on January 21 to reflect on the life and work of Dr. King.
 

YAHOO FOR IRS

What do Britney Spears, Harry Potter, Jennifer Lopez and the IRS have in common?  They all made the Top 20 list of search terms on Internet Web portal Yahoo! for 2001.  “Internal Revenue Service” finished the year in 10th place, just behind 9th-place NASCAR and just ahead of 11th place Jennifer Lopez.  According to a Yahoo! news release, the number one search term on Yahoo! for 2001 was Playstation 2.  The many changes in the tax law, plus the publicity given the famous “rebate” checks, likely added to the IRS total searches for the year.