Federal employees tasked with taking good care of the women and men within the army spent 87,000 hours and $3.3 million taking good care of their very own union advantages — and taxpayers footed the invoice, The Put up has discovered.
Throughout fiscal years 2023 and 2024, union staffers on the Protection Well being Company (DHA) — which oversees the TRICARE well being advantages for US troops — charged the federal authorities for the time they spent engaged on contract negotiations, eking out fringe advantages and different union duties, in accordance with a report obtained by Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) workplace.
Of the $3.3 million spent on “union time,” about $190,000 was spent on negotiating a labor contract for employees on the company since April 2023.
“Throughout this era our company was present process a major transition aimed toward stabilizing and enhancing our labor relations course of,” DHA stated when requested in regards to the giant expense.
On the time, solely about 36% of seats on the company’s headquarters had been occupied, in accordance with the findings.
DHA’s multimillion bills on taxpayer-funded union time is the most important determine that Ernst’s workplace has launched throughout its investigation of using taxpayer assets on union-related bills throughout federal businesses.
Ernst, an Military veteran and chief of the Senate DOGE caucus, has been probing federal company use of taxpayer-funded union time and beforehand championed laws requiring federal employees to reimburse the federal government for time and assets spent on union actions.
“This report on the Protection Well being Company highlights every thing that’s fallacious with the federal workforce,” Ernst instructed The Put up.
“Taxpayers had been subsidizing greater than $3 million of union actions whereas the D.C. headquarters sat at simply 36% occupancy. Bureaucrats ought to serve the American individuals, not themselves.”
Different businesses had considerably decrease spending on taxpayer-funded union time. NASA spent about $400,000 final yr, whereas the Nuclear Regulatory Fee spent about $420,000 on it in 2024.
Federal unions are restricted from negotiating advantages and pay by the Federal Service Labor Administration Relations Statute. As an alternative, advantages and pay are decided by regulation set by Congress and federal laws.
However federal unions can negotiate over extra minor features of working circumstances.
“This contains issues like the peak of cubicle panels, securing designated smoking areas on in any other case smoke-free campuses, and the precise to put on Spandex at work,” Rachel Greszler, a senior analysis fellow on workforce and public finance on the Heritage Basis, beforehand instructed The Put up.
Again in 2019, the Workplace of Personnel Administration launched complete knowledge on taxpayer-funded union time and concluded that your complete federal authorities had spent a minimum of $135 million on it that yr.
After 2019, OPM stopped monitoring that knowledge.
Again in February, Ernst requested knowledge from 24 federal businesses. The Trump administration has since directed federal businesses to furnish that info.
The Put up reached out to each DHA and its union for remark.
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