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Politics : How Quickly Can Obama Totally Destroy the US? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: joseffy who wrote (1599)	2/23/2013 2:21:59 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 16547

As furloughs loom, unions try to soften sequester blow for federal workers Federal government labor unions and agency managers are bargaining over how and when to carry out first-of-their-kind furloughs of more than a million employees as deep spending cuts are all but certain to kick in Friday. Union leaders cannot stop the furloughs or determine who in each agency must take them. They say their best option is to soften the pain of unpaid days, which could slash federal pay by up to 20 percent this fiscal year. They are demanding that employees be able to choose when to take days off and volunteer for more to help financially strapped colleagues. They want guarantees that no one will be penalized when work does not get done and assurances that managers cannot choose favorites to spare. Many of you will be missing eight, 10, 20 days of work,” Alex Bastani, president of Local 12 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), told a standing-room-only crowd of 400 Labor Department employees Thursday at a lunchtime town hall on sequestration. “Congress wants the furlough,” Bastani said. “There are some people saying it’s not going to happen. I don’t think they’re in contact with reality.” This would be the first time that furloughs across the federal government would occur with no chance that lost pay would be recovered. The new terrain is setting off anxiety for employees and confusion for personnel managers as agencies from the Defense Department to the Federal Aviation Administration announce unpaid days. “We’ve never been through a sequester before,” said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 130,000 workers from the Internal Revenue Service to the Agriculture Department. “There aren’t any rules.” Unions and management at the Labor Department will sit down Monday to begin five days of bargaining with three unions over furloughs scheduled to start April 1. “The goal here is to be fair across the board,” department spokesman Stephen Barr said, “to deliver the mission and not let it get harmed.” But as they prepare to sit at bargaining tables across the government, both sides are finding that little is straightforward — agencies are planning $85 billion in cuts without knowing from one day to the next whether Congress might somehow reach agreement to stop them. This may be new terrain, but there are rules the government must follow when it comes to furloughs. Personnel managers have been poring over civil service laws for weeks. No one will be sent home without pay Friday. The soonest furloughs would start is April 1. Employees must be given a notice at least 30 days in advance, and they have seven days to contest it. Most agencies plan to spread out unpaid days to minimize the effect on services and workers. While the number of days is likely to differ in each section of an agency, all employees in the unit will be hit equally. Agencies have capped furloughs at 22 days. If unpaid leave exceeded that, it would become a layoff. Furloughs will mean forfeited vacation and sick time, but how much time depends on the number of forced days off. It is unclear whether hardship cases will be considered. As Bastani told Labor Department employees, federal workers should be careful about three-day holiday weekends. Adding a fourth as a furlough day means they will not get holiday pay. Short-term unemployment benefits are an option, he said, but not in Virginia. Contractors working on ongoing projects will not be furloughed.

To: joseffy who wrote (1599)	2/23/2013 2:24:18 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16547

THE LONG MEMORY OF THE LAW: Robin Hall, 40, is married, has two kids, and works in jet-engine design in Connecticut, but she wasn't always that respectable. "Back in 1991," she said, "I shoplifted cigarettes from Walmart." After 22 years, Hall went back to Florida for a Disney cruise vacation. When the ship returned to port, "I was pulled aside and told I had a warrant." It was for failing to pay $85 in court costs related to her shoplifting case, and the authorities had found it when checking the passenger list "for terrorists." So Hall was tossed in jail -- and kept there over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend so that she could be transferred to the right county before being allowed to post bail. (AC/WESH Orlando) ...What use is a "terrorist check" that isn't run in time to arrest someone before the boat leaves