United States General Accounting Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Civil Service, Committee on

Government Reform and Oversight, House of

Representatives

For Release on Delivery

Expected

at 11:00 a.m. EDT

Wednesday

September 11, 1996

FEDERAL LABOR

RELATIONS

Official Time Used for

Union Activities

Statement by

Timothy P. Bowling

Associate Director

Federal Management and Workforce Issues

General Government Division

G O A

years

1921 - 1996

GAO/T-GGD-96-191

Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the charging of official time for

federal workers’ union activities.1

 Almost 1.9 million federal workers are

represented by unions—about 750,000 employees of the Postal Service

and about 1.1 million nonpostal workers. This Subcommittee has

expressed interest in the extent to which employees use official time for

union activities. We found that the four major federal entities we

examined neither collect nor report the kinds of data needed to accurately

portray the practice across agencies.

I would like to discuss three main points:

• The use of official time for union activities is an established practice in the

federal government.

• The total amount of official time used for union activities, the cost of that

time, and the number of people using that time are unknown.

• No reporting requirement exists for agencies to generate comprehensive

data on their support of union activities.

You have raised the question of the extent to which federal taxpayers

subsidize the activities of federal employee unions. Based on our findings

at the four entities we examined, the question cannot be answered with

any precision. Decisionmakers could more readily address the question if

better data existed on (1) the amount and cost of the hours used for union

activities, as well as the number of employees using those hours; (2) the

types of activities covered by the hours used; and (3) the overall costs of

agencies’ support for union activities. We recognize that data gathering

and reporting can be expensive, and expect that decisionmakers would

need to balance the potential costs and benefits of the various options for

doing so.

As you requested, we looked at four entities: the Postal Service, the

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),

and the Social Security Administration (SSA). As you know, Mr. Chairman,

we are currently involved in a broader examination of these issues at your

request. Because that work is in its preliminary stages, I will talk today

1

“Official time” means time granted an employee by an agency to perform certain union activities when

the employee would otherwise be in a duty status. Union activities for which official time is granted

are generally included in those “representational functions” undertaken by an employee on behalf of

another employee pursuant to statute, regulation, executive order, or the terms of a collective

bargaining agreement. In addition to union activities, representational functions generally are

understood to include such other activities as certain health and safety matters, prevailing wage

appeals, and EEO complaints.

Page 1 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

primarily about information we developed in earlier work in response to a

request from the Chairman, Subcommittee on Social Security, House

Committee on Ways and Means. In performing this review, we met with

union and management officials at Postal Service, VA, and IRS

headquarters; we also interviewed officials at seven field facilities.2 At

these entities, we gathered readily available data on the amount of official

time charged to union activities and the cost of that time. Our work at SSA

was somewhat more extensive than at these entities. We interviewed

union and management officials at SSA headquarters and at 4 of SSA’s 10

regional offices. We conducted a limited verification of time captured in

SSA’s national reporting system at one SSA region and at several

headquarters components. As part of our work at SSA, we also

(1) identified the total number of union representatives at SSA authorized

to spend time on union activities, (2) identified the number of

representatives who spent at least 75 percent of their time on union

activities, and (3) estimated the cost of time charged to union activities.3

The employees represented by unions at these four entities—the Postal

Service, VA, IRS, and SSA—make up about 59 percent of all federal workers

who are represented by unions and are part of collective bargaining units.

One caution regarding our findings: although more than half of the federal

employees who are represented by unions work at the four entities we

examined, we cannot extrapolate the limited data we were able to obtain

to the government as a whole. The methodological reasons for this will be

made clearer as I relate our findings to you.

The Use of Official

Time for Union

Activities Is an

Established Practice

in the Federal

Government

The use of official time for union activities is a widely-established practice

in the federal government. Both in the Postal Service—an independent

establishment of the executive branch that uses almost no appropriated

funds—and in other federal agencies that do use taxpayer money, a legal

basis exists for using agency resources to pay costs associated with union

activities.

Labor-management relations in the Postal Service are governed by the

Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which brought postal labor relations

into a framework similar to that of private-sector firms.4

 At the Postal

2

We interviewed officials at three Postal Service, two VA, and two IRS field facilities.

3

For more detailed information on SSA, a history of union activity in the federal government, and a

discussion of union costs in private industry, see Social Security: Union Activity at the Social Security

Administration (GAO/T-HEHS-96-150, Jun. 4, 1996).

4

Public Law 91-375, August 12, 1970.

Page 2 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

Service, policies governing the charging of official time to union activities

are a matter subject to collective bargaining.

Among nonpostal federal agencies, labor-management relations are

governed by title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA).5 CSRA

allows nonpostal federal employees to bargain collectively through labor

organizations of their choice and thereby participate with agency

management in the development of personnel policies and practices and

other decisions that affect their working lives. Title VII of CSRA is

administered by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), an

organization led by a three-member panel that issues policy decisions and

adjudicates labor-management disputes.

Official time for collective bargaining and FLRA-authorized activities is

provided as a matter of statutory right. Official time for other purposes is

negotiated. CSRA allows official time to be negotiated in any amount the

agency and the union involved agree to be reasonable, necessary, and in

the public interest. However, the act specifies that activities that relate to

internal union business, such as the solicitation of members or the

election of union officials, must be performed when in a nonduty status,

that is, not on official time.

Ten unions have national collective bargaining agreements with the

entities we examined—four with the Postal Service, four with VA, one

with IRS, and one with SSA. Our review of these collective bargaining

agreements, or contracts, revealed a wide range of union activities for

which official time might be charged. Although the specifics of the 10

contracts varied, some of the categories of employees authorized to

charge official time to union activities, as well as the specific activities

covered, were as follows:6

• Union stewards, employees filing grievances, and witnesses may charge

time spent involved in grievance procedures.

• Union representatives may charge time spent attending meetings called by

management concerning the collective bargaining agreement; joint

labor-management committee meetings addressing specific issues, such as

safety and health; semiannual labor-management relations committee

5

Public Law 95-454, 5 U.S.C. 7101 et seq. CSRA codified practices on the use of official time that were

previously authorized by executive order.

6

This list is not comprehensive. Nor do all of the types of authorized employees and activities listed

here appear in all ten of the collective bargaining agreements we reviewed.

Page 3 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

meetings; and union-sponsored training and other training sessions

pertaining to labor relations.

• Union representatives may charge time spent on participating in

discussions regarding personnel policies or practices or conditions of

employment; on national-level negotiations, as well as on preparing for the

negotiations; on local-level negotiations; and on new-employee

orientation.

• Employees may charge time spent meeting with their union

representatives regarding grievances, appeals, or personal matters.

Under some contracts, official time is authorized for travel to and from the

kinds of meetings mentioned above; under others, official time for travel is

either specifically denied or not mentioned.

On October 1, 1993, Executive Order 12871 articulated a new vision of

labor-management relations, referred to as “partnerships.” The partnership

concept may have implications for the extent of official time spent on

union-related activities.7

 However, we could not determine the amount of

official time actually used for partnership activities at the four federal

entities we examined.8

The Total Amount of

Official Time Used for

Union Activities, the

Cost of That Time,

and the Number of

People Using That

Time Are Unknown

We know that using official time for various union activities is an

established practice at the four entities we examined, and we can report

certain relevant statistics that each of these entities made available to us,

but we found that these statistics are limited in what they tell us. Within

these entities, insufficient data exist on the amount of official time used

for union activities, the cost of the time, and the number of people using

that time to draw broad conclusions. Nor can we legitimately compare one

agency’s figures with another’s, or extrapolate to the larger federal

universe. The reason for this becomes apparent when we compare the

kinds of information reported by the entities we reviewed.

For fiscal year 1995, the Postal Service reported official time charges for

union activities of 1.7 million hours. Also for fiscal year 1995, SSA reported

7

For a brief discussion of these implications at SSA in particular, see the statement on “Use of the

Trust Funds for Union Activities,” given by the Commissioner of Social Security before the House

Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Social Security, on July 27, 1996.

8

As an independent executive branch establishment, the U.S. Postal Service is not subject to the

provisions of the executive order. However, in addition to the 1.7 million hours charged to union

activities in fiscal year 1995, the Postal Service also paid for time spent on employee involvement

programs similar to other entities’ partnership activities. Unlike other “union activities” at the Postal

Service, employee involvement programs were not mandated by statute, regulation, executive order,

or collective bargaining agreements.

Page 4 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

time charges of 404,000 hours, and IRS reported 527,000 hours. No

departmentwide data were available from VA, which lacks any reporting

system that would have captured the hours used throughout the

department. But even among the three entities that did have reporting

systems, the systems themselves—and the types of activities they included

in the reported hours—differed from one agency to the next. Therefore,

the figures these entities reported were not comparable.

Table 1: Official Time Charged to Union Activities, Cost of the Time, and Number of People Charging Time by Agency

Agency

Number of employees

represented by unions

with national collective

bargaining agreements

Agency-reported

hours charged to

union activities in

fiscal year 1995

Cost of the time

charged to union

activities (in millions)

Number of employees

authorized to charge

time to union activities

Postal Service 751,000 1,744,000 $29.2a Unknown

Veterans Affairsb 165,000 Unknown Unknown Unknown

Internal Revenue Service 97,000 527,000 Unknown Unknown

Social Security

Administration

52,000 404,000c $11.4d 1,800e

aThe $29.2 million cost associated with the number of hours charged to union activities included

only direct salaries.

bVA did not have a time-reporting system that would provide the total number of hours used for

union activities, the cost of the hours, or the number of employees using time for union activities

for the Department.

cSSA reported that its employees charged 404,000 hours to union activities in fiscal year 1995.

We found these charges to be underreported by at least 9,000 hours, bringing the total to at least

413,000 hours.

dSSA provided Congress with an annual estimate totaling $11 million for union activities expenses

in fiscal year 1995. We estimated the cost of the hours charged to union activities, including both

direct salaries and benefits, to be $11.4 million. As agreed with your staff, we did not attempt to

make this estimate at the other three entities we examined.

eAt a minimum, 146 union representatives spent at least 75 percent of their “on-the-clock” time on

union activities. However, we identified about 1,800 union representatives authorized to charge

time to union activities.

Source: Unverified data provided by the agencies and our analysis.

The Postal Service, for example, reported 1,744,000 hours charged by

union stewards for union activities in fiscal year 1995. But these

hours—entailing, by Postal Service calculation, over $29 million in direct

salaries—covered only time spent by union stewards in trying to resolve

Page 5 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

grievances in the early stages.9 The hours reported by the Postal Service

did not include substantial additional time spent on other union activities

that was paid for by the Postal Service. For example, the Postal Service

paid for union representatives’ time spent on unfair labor practice

charges—commonly a major focus of labor-management activity—but did

not include these hours in reported time charges.

As I previously mentioned, SSA reported that its employees charged 404,000

hours to union activities in fiscal year 1995. However, in attempting to

verify these charges, we found them to be underreported by at least 9,000

hours (or 2 percent), bringing the total to at least 413,000 hours. SSA has no

formal system for routinely calculating and reporting the costs of union

activity, although it does provide annual estimates of the expenses for

union activities to Congress.10 We estimated the cost of the time spent on

union activities in calendar year 1995 at SSA to be about $11.4 million,

based on an estimated total of 413,000 hours and on the salaries and

estimated benefits of the union representatives. Regarding the total

number of SSA union representatives who were authorized to spend time

on union activities, the agency estimated the figure to be about 1,600. Our

count, based on our identification of these personnel at the local SSA level,

was about 1,800, or roughly 200 more than SSA’s figure.

Of the 527,000 hours charged to union activities at IRS in fiscal year 1995,

about 348,000 hours (or 66 percent of the total) involved time spent by

employees who were participating on behalf of the union in meetings

called by agency management. The remaining 179,000 hours (or

34 percent) covered all other union-related activities, including grievance

resolution. IRS officials told us that they did not calculate salary costs

based on the hours charged and could not provide information on the

number of union representatives charging official time to union activities.

Based on the findings I have just related, it is apparent that the reporting

systems of all of the entities we examined had substantial limitations. VA,

as I stated earlier, had no system at all at the departmental level. We

visited two VA field facilities; one had a reporting system to capture

official time charged to union activities, and the other did not. We found

SSA’s national system for capturing and reporting time spent on union

9

The Postal Service procedure for resolving grievances is a 4- or 5-step procedure, involving

progressively lower to higher level union and management officials, with the final step involving

outside binding arbitration. In this context, the term “early stages” indicates that the grievance was in

step 1 or 2—still informal or at the field facility level.

10SSA’s estimates of union costs increased from $6 million to $11 million between fiscal years 1993 and

1995.

Page 6 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

activities was comprised of two component systems—one an automated

system and the other a less-accurate manual one.11 The reporting

procedures at the IRS regional offices we visited varied from one unit to the

next. None of the systems at any of the entities we examined was designed

to capture the hours spent by management or other employees on

union-related matters, to report the number or names of individuals

charging official time, or to identify all of the costs of the agency’s support

of union activities.

No Reporting

Requirement Exists

for Agencies to

Generate

Comprehensive Data

on Their Support of

Union Activities

One reason for this inconsistent pattern of reporting is that—as Office of

Personnel Management (OPM) officials told us—there is currently no

governmentwide requirement to gather data on, or report the amount of

time federal employees use for, union activities. It is not surprising,

therefore, that the time-reporting systems at the four entities we examined

had substantial limitations.

In a 1979 report, we recommended that OPM (1) clarify its recordkeeping

requirements then in effect for capturing time spent on representational

functions (mainly union activities) and (2) direct agencies to comply with

those requirements.12 Even though guidance at the time required federal

agencies to keep records on official time used for representational

functions, 18 of the 26 units we surveyed at four agencies did not.13 We

recommended that OPM require agencies to submit annual reports on

official time used for representational functions, envisioning that such

reports “could assist OPM in evaluating Federal labor-management

relations activities.”

Following our report, in 1981, OPM issued Federal Personnel Manual Letter

711-161. The letter required that, no later than January 1, 1982, federal

agencies activate a recordkeeping system to capture official time charges

to representational functions. But the letter did not require agencies to

report the yearly time charges to OPM, as we had recommended. As a

result, OPM never consolidated the amount of time charged

11The underreporting of official time charges we discovered at SSA took place primarily in SSA’s

manual system, and resulted from inaccurate reporting from source documents, overlooked reports

for some union representatives, and uncounted reports for some organizational units during certain

reporting periods.

12Inadequate Recordkeeping on Official Time Used for Representational Functions (GAO-FPCD-79-77,

Sept. 17, 1979).

13We included the following four agencies in our 1979 review of recordkeeping of official time used for

representational functions: the Departments of Transportation; Health, Education, and Welfare; Labor;

and OPM.

Page 7 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
Statement 

Federal Labor Relations: Official Time Used

for Union Activites

governmentwide to union activities and has no information on agencies’

compliance with the recordkeeping requirement. When the Federal

Personnel Manual was abolished in 1994, all recordkeeping requirements

regarding time spent on union activities were rescinded.

In summary, Mr. Chairman, we found limitations in recordkeeping and

reporting among the four entities we examined. We also found that no

reporting requirement exists to ensure that agencies generate

comprehensive data on their support of union activities. If decisionmakers

hope to resolve the question of the extent to which federal taxpayers

subsidize the activities of federal employee unions, better data are needed

on (1) the amount and cost of the hours used for union activities, as well

as the number of employees using those hours; (2) the types of activities

covered by the hours used; and (3) the overall costs of agencies’ support

for union activities. Recognizing that data gathering can be expensive, we

believe that decisionmakers would need to balance the costs and benefits

of the various options for doing so.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased

to answer any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee

may wish to ask.

(410039) Page 8 GAO/T-GGD-96-191
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