POPA sends three delegates to White House conference on civil service and Federal sector labor relations organized by POPA’s General Counsel.
On June 20, POPA President Kathleen Duda, Treasurer Gabe Chu, Grievance Chair Irakli Kiknadze toured the White House and attended an afternoon-long conference and roundtable discussions with senior Administration officials on Federal sector labor relations and issues facing the civil service. This event was sponsored with the Administration by the Federal Workers Alliance, a consortium of over 30 unions that represent Federal employees, to which POPA belongs. Sixteen of these unions sent representatives to the June 20 conference. Among the Administration participants was Acting OPM Director Rob Shriver, OMB Deputy Director Jason Miller, White House Political Director Emmy Ruiz, Erika Dinkel-Smith, Specials Assistant to the President for Labor, and Josh Orton, Senior Labor Advisor to the Vice President. This conference was organized for the Federal Workers Alliance by POPA’s General Counsel Richard Hirn, who serves as the Co-Chair of the FWA’s Legal Committee.
Among the issues raised by the union representatives at this meeting were telework, employee retention and the widespread understaffing across virtually all Federal agencies. Participants in the conference also reviewed the unprecedented initiatives implemented by President Biden to support and enhance collective bargaining in the Federal sector, such as the Executive Orders which direct agencies to bargain over permissive matters with their unions and to facilitate the ability of unions to recruit new members. Of special note was the recent OPM regulations which would limit the ability of future Administrations from politicizing the civil service and depriving employees of due process rights by converting theirpositions to the notorious “Schedule F” of the Excepted Service.
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