Cash for Slackers

Wouldn’t you like to have a job where you get paid to slack off, and no matter what, have a powerful authority to back you up, winning battles to preserve your salary, benefits, and your every demand if your boss tries to fire you?

It’s a fact of life for many government workers. A dive into government labor fights at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) reveals a nasty secret—the great lengths federal unions go to protect government slackers, at your expense.

Cases at the FLRA, a quasi-judicial body that oversees disputes between federal agencies and government unions, show federal labor unions are winning battles that are putting taxpayers, and the government, at risk.

And now one big government insider is calling foul on government union abuses of taxpayers and federal agencies. Patrick Pizzella, one of the three referees at the FLRA adjudicating these fights, is blowing the whistle on federal union abuses in case after case. “One cannot make this stuff up,” Pizzella said.

For example, federal labor unions are winning fights against federal agencies who try to fire their union workers for letting mentally ill military veterans walk out the door of psychiatric units in Veterans Affairs hospitals, or for not catching things like a major rat infestation in a food factory. Instead, union lawyers are getting their members’ jobs, back-pay, and benefits reinstated, all at taxpayer expense.

Federal unions have also battled Defense Dept. agencies that, for example, try to suspend a daycare worker for letting a toddler wander off a military base down the sidewalk toward traffic.

At the same time, federal worker unions have been fighting to unionize federal inspector generals’ offices, the watchdogs who catch waste, fraud and abuse committed by federal workers at agencies like the IRS, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Transportation, or the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

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