Reply to USDA Scientists refusing to move/relocate to Missouri

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Apparently the agency backed out of a telework and relocation incentive agreement with the union at the last minute. Also no one is sure when is the actual deadline for employee to accept the relocation:

https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/07/usda-employees-who-didnt-already-opt-move-kansas-city-may-be-out-luck/158816/

Further complicating matters, the agency has apparently reneged on a tentative agreement to provide a transition period of telework and relocation incentives to encourage employees currently on the fence to accept the reassignment to Kansas City.

Peter Winch, special assistant to the national vice president of AFGE, who has been in negotiations on behalf of research agency employees since they voted to unionize earlier this year, said that AFGE reached a tentative agreement on July 24 with management, including acting ERS Administrator Ephraim Leibtag, to request the authority to offer a transition period of full-time telework to workers who accept their reassignment orders, as well as provide relocation incentives equivalent to one month’s salary.

But the next day, when the parties were expected to formally sign the agreement, management officials cancelled, saying they had been called into meetings.

“They said they’d do some edits, make some technical changes and run it up the food chain, but since then it’s been radio silence,” Winch said. “The meetings with ERS [negotiators] were very cordial, but I guess the most polite word I can use to describe it now is ‘inconclusive.’ ”

The tentative agreement also included language that would have codified the department’s decision to allow employees until Sept. 30 to make their final decision on whether to relocate.

“Now that Kansas City is the location, although they don’t know whether it will be in Kansas or Missouri, we wanted to reaffirm that [employees] could change their minds,” Winch said. “What we agreed to, especially the one month’s salary bonus for relocation, that might affect people’s decision-making.”

The next meeting between the Agriculture Department and AFGE is scheduled for Aug. 8. But Winch said that even if the department affirms the terms of the tentative agreement at that meeting, it will be a moot point. Employees considering whether to relocate have a July 31 deadline to express their interest in jobs elsewhere in the department under priority hiring, and an Aug. 9 deadline to submit their resume.

“I’ve told them that [regarding the Aug. 6 meeting], at that point it wouldn’t make much difference if we met, because there’s a hard deadline of July 31,” Winch said. “Ephraim Leibtag was there, and he agreed to all the terms. We spent two days bargaining this thing, and they had plenty of time to review our initial proposals. In ordinary circumstances, I’d say this was bad faith bargaining, and it meets the definition of bad faith bargaining. But at this point, my recourse is very limited.”[/quote]

Maybe because fulltime telework is not relocation...[/quote]

Don't you get it yet? The purpose of all these bumbling actions is to cause people to quit and gut the agency.[/quote]

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