Enter your email address to subscribe to POPA.org and receive notifications of new posts by email.

TEAPP Telework Pilot Begins

Feb 282012
 

The long awaited Telework Enhancement Act Pilot Program (TEAPP) is finally underway. The program permits employees living farther than 50 miles from the USPTO to telework without regular trips back to headquarters to fulfill reporting requirements. The pilot is of limited duration (seven years from the date of enactment by law and four years based on current General Services Administration approval). Participating employees must agree to pay for travel expenses for up to four business unit trips, one agency-wide required trip and ethics training (if required) spanning up to 10 business days at the USPTO headquarters per year. Employees must also agree to track their travel expenses so that the costs and effectiveness of the pilot can be accurately evaluated.

Phase I applicants may already have been accepted into the program at POPA News print time. Phase I applicants for the POPA bargaining unit include employees who are: 1) already teleworking full time, i.e., only coming to campus to fulfill reporting requirements; 2) participating in a perman­ent telework program; and 3) living a distance greater than 50 miles from campus on or before Oct. 11, 2011.

Phase II applicants for POPA have also been invited to apply for TEAPP participation. Phase II includes employees who are: 1) already teleworking full time, i.e., only coming to campus to fulfill reporting requirements; 2) participating in a permanent telework program; and 3) living a distance of greater than 50 miles from campus after Oct. 11, 2011. Phase II POPA bargaining unit members will be assigned slots in the TEAPP program by seniority. If all of the employees are unable to be accepted due to a limited number of slots, a waiting list will be established by order of seniority.

After Phase II, employees will be added to the waiting list on a first come, first served basis. On a quarterly basis, additional slots will be made available to maintain participation at a level of 25 percent of the full time teleworking employees in the bargaining unit. This percentage may change in future years based upon evaluation of the program.

In addition to changing employees’ duty station and reporting requirements, TEAPP also places some limitations on employees’ telework activities, such as requiring that the alternate work site be located within the 48 contiguous states and requirements for temporarily working from locations other than an employee’s alternate work site or USPTO headquarters.

POPA encourages all TEAPP participants to thoroughly familiarize themselves with the TEAPP Operating Procedures and other guidelines available to employees. Links to these documents are provided in the “Participant Notification” email sent to each TEAPP participant upon acceptance into the pilot. As always, contact POPA if you have any questions regarding TEAPP.


POPA and Agency Agree to Pre-tax Parking Reimbursement

Feb 282012
 

Employees can set aside from their salary up to $240 per month in pre-tax dollars—a limit set by the IRS—to pay for parking at the USPTO garages, Metro stations or places near the Alexandria campus.

A non-government vendor, SHPS, handles the program and processing. Employees can participate in both this parking program and the transit subsidy program.

Employees sign up for the program and claim reimbursements at SHPS. After registration, employees remain enrolled until they change their election, much like federal health plan benefits. Money rolls over from month to month and year to year. However, spending is limited to the monthly IRS $240 maximum for parking. For example: You have a balance of $300 in your parking account at the beginning of July. You can only spend $240 during July, but you have the ability to adjust future contributions to avoid an excess balance.

Your parking reimbursement account will terminate on the date of your separation or retirement. Any eligible parking expenses incurred prior to that date may still be reimbursed, but those incurred after the separation date are not eligible. Employees then have 181 days after separating from the USPTO to claim reimbursement. After that, you lose any funds remaining in the account.

For reimbursement, employees provide an itemized receipt from the parking facility that shows the name of the vendor, the date(s) the service was provided and the cost. However, employees also can submit claims online without receipts and complete the affidavit section.

Employees can enroll, change or cancel a parking reimbursement account at any time. Any enrollments or changes to the election made by the first day of each pay period will be effective the first day of the current pay period. Any elections made after the first day of each pay period will be effective the first day of the following pay period. The only exception is during a holiday. For example, if you enroll by Jan. 15, 2012, that election will be effective on Jan. 15, 2012, the first day of the pay period. However, if you enroll on Jan. 16, 2012, your election will be effective on Jan. 29, 2012.

The USPTO signed the parking reimbursement agreement in mid-January with POPA and National Treasury Employees Union Chapters 243 and 245.

How Much Does the Pay Freeze Cost You?

Feb 282012
 

Federal employees have entered the second year of the freeze on annual cost-of-living adjustments. POPA is representing patent professionals to Congress, asking that employees receive a fair pay adjustment in fiscal year 2013. In addition to our own representational activities, POPA has joined the Federal-Postal Coalition, a large group of labor unions representing the majority of federal employees. The Federal-Postal Coalition is working hard to educate Con­gress on the sacrifices federal employees have already made in the current economy and to persuade representatives and senators not to further freeze employee pay or to take away our hard-earned benefits.

To see how the current two-year pay freeze affects your earnings over the lifetime of your federal career, use the cal­culator devised by the International Federation of Profession­al and Technical Engineers at IFPTE Calculator.

State of the Union

Feb 282012
 

POPA Reviews 2011 Accomplishments, Next Steps in 2012

POPA leaders outlined the achievements of 2011 and the challenges for 2012 at the union’s annual meeting on Dec. 8.

POPA President Robert Budens told the audience that the union had represented employees that morning before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the USPTO’s appeal of the Federal Labor Relations Authority decision to award employees backpay in the Millennium Pay cases. “While we await the court’s decision, we will continue to try and settle these grievances,” said Budens.

A huge change on the horizon involves the USPTO potentially moving to a new international patent classification system being jointly developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and USPTO. The Cooperative Patent Classification system (CPC) is planned to replace both the U.S. Patent Classification (USPC) system at the USPTO and the ECLA classification system at the EPO. CPC will be based on the structure of the International Patent Classification, but will have many more divisions (classes/subclasses) than either the USPC or ECLA. POPA is working on a task force with the USPTO to address the issues that will affect examiners.

Budens said that POPA continues to monitor the effects of the Count System Initiatives and the Examiner Performance Appraisal Plan Initiatives (PAP), one of the joint agency-union 2011 achievements. POPA and the USPTO meet regularly to adjust these initiatives as needed. For example, in FY 2012, individual RCE adjustments were phased out in favor of an across-the-board RCE adjustment for the entire examining corps.

In another example, as part of the PAP Initiatives, the USPTO introduced the Docket Management element of the PAP for FY 2012 on Oct. 12, 2011. Developed with POPA input, the Docket Management element fundamentally changed the methods the agency and examiners use to track workloads and act on patent applications in a timely man­ner. “We continue to work with the agency every day to re ­solve PAP issues as they arise,” Budens told employees, “so please let us and the agency know when you find a problem.”

POPA worked closely with the agency in rolling out the new universal laptop computers, which all examiners should have in early 2012. POPA also agreed to implement the Telework Enhancement Act Pilot Program (TEAPP) together with the agency and the other two employee unions—NTEU locals 243 and 245. TEAPP will limit the number of times employees living outside the local commuting area of the USPTO Alexandria headquarters, (the “50 mile radius”) would have to return to the USPTO at their own expense.
[TEAPP article.]

During 2011, POPA also worked on advances for other units and employees in POPA’s bargaining unit, such as employees in the Central Reexamination Unit and employ­ees affected by the settlement of the recent clarification of unit petition. Work in these areas will continue in 2012.

Disciplinary/Adverse Actions

While POPA bargaining unit employees generally experienced a drop in the number of performance-based disciplinary and adverse actions in 2011, actions based on employee conduct rose, according to a report from POPA Vice President and Director of Adverse Action Challenges Howard Locker. Through the creation of performance “safety zones” in the PAP Initiatives, the USPTO has worked with POPA to give employees more opportunities to improve performance and the agency—an initiative that has benefit ed both employees and the USPTO. POPA and the agency continue to communicate with each other and with our bar gaining unit members regarding appropriate work conduct.

In addition to working together to resolve performance and conduct issues, POPA and the agency have addressed many other significant issues to help protect employee rights. These issues include:

■ Performance warnings remain contestable via POPA’s negotiated grievance procedure;

■ Oral warnings, which the agency had tried to abolish, remain in use;

■ Performance measurement parameters have been modified in several respects to better represent employee performance;

■ Production credit reapportionment—the first in more than 30 years—more directly reflects when work is done in a case;

■ Safety zones now exist in all examiner critical PAP elements—unacceptable performance does not necessarily result in a performance warning;

■ Employee terminations remain arbitrable;

■ Examiners can more easily transfer to other art units;

■ The examiner optional clear error review process provides some much-needed transparency into performance errors called by the supervisor, involving the technology center director before the grievance process rather than midway through it and several months after the fact;

■ Errors called by quality assurance specialists do not affect an employee’s PAP—they’re for training purposes only. PAP errors need to be cited by the employee’s supervisor.

 

The above initiatives are good news for employees— they have generally resulted in fewer performance-based actions during this administration. However, recently proposed performance actions are generally better substantiated, with the agency doing a better job of documenting assistance to the employee during improvement periods than had been the case in years past.

Conduct-based disciplinary and adverse actions are, unfortunately, on the increase at the USPTO.

Improper use of the Internet is the largest basis for conduct-related disciplinary and adverse actions. These include excessive bandwidth use, accessing objectionable websites, and downloading unauthorized items on government-issued desktop or laptop computers.

The agency still has not provided employees with the means to monitor their monthly bandwidth usage. The agency has notified employees about the issue with a list of practices to avoid. After working with POPA the agency has agreed that the first documented occurrence of excessive bandwidth usage will result in a letter of counseling (not a disciplinary action). A second occurrence normally will result in a letter of reprimand (lowest level of disciplinary action) and progressive discipline. For a third occurrence, the employee could face suspension. Nevertheless, working with POPA, the current agency policy represents a significant improvement over previous agency policy, wherein an employee faced a 14-day suspension for a first occurrence. The USPTO has also agreed to keep letters of reprimand in an employee’s official personnel file for only 12 months. Prior to this agreement, the Employee Relations division could leave a letter of reprimand in the employee’s file for an undetermined time.

Accessing objectionable websites from any government computer is dealt with very harshly by the agency. Words to the wise—don’t do it. Do not download unauthorized software or Internet browsers to any government computer. The agency has more than 20 contract employees monitoring individual Internet usage with forensic software. If your Internet usage hits or exceeds 5 gigabytes/month, you will get on the agency’s radar screen and could likely face questioning about your Internet usage.

The USPTO also watches the time that hotelers claim to be working and reconciles it with computer usage. The agency can see exactly when you logged in on your computer, what you did and periods of inactivity.