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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OPM rules say everyone has to take lunch, regardless of whether they're in a union. Your friend's situation may be unique because she's under DOD.

Either way the half hour lunch thing is stupid, and many agencies don't actually enforce it.  Try to get a job where you're not in the bargaining unit.[/quote]

There are generally great advantages to being in a bargaining unit.  Mine is one of the main reasons that I stay at my job.  In our agency, bargaining unit employees have much more scheduling and telework opportunities than non-bargaining unit.[/quote]
I was an attorney in the bargaining unit before I switched agencies, and the difference was night and day.

At the old job, supervisors would watch the clock like hawks. They cared more about who signed into WebTA five minutes late than they did actually developing employees. Thanks to the union, every aspect of our work had to be quantified, making the job feel like a factory under Taylorism where all that mattered were production numbers (they couldn't quantify quality, so volume was all that mattered).  Things like moving to an empty cubicle were huge ordeals because they had to go through the union, and management was so defensive about everything that you couldn't even ask for feedback on work without having a formal meeting about it. Oh, but there was telework available.

Meanwhile, at the new job, attorneys are treated like actual professionals. We don't have formal flex schedules, but supervisors don't care when you get into work so long as you're work gets done well. If you want to skip lunch one day, no one will bat an eyelash because the bosses actually trust us to behave like adults. Overall, everything is 1000 times more collegial and pleasant. We still get telework, too.[/quote]

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