July 2016 Federal Employment Law Training Group Newsletter
Way back in 1981, I submitted a paper for presentation at an upcoming conference. I was relatively fresh out of graduate school with a big Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology, and I had spent the better part of three years trying to implement the annual performance appraisal program recently demanded by the newly-created Office of Personnel Management. My academic training plus my real-life experience was telling me that annual performance appraisal was a poor management tool and a waste of time for both managers and employees. In addition, I could tell that even with good employees, performance appraisal could easily demotivate. Therefore, I proposed that OPM abolish annual appraisal in a wonderful little paper entitled, “Just Say No to Annual Performance Appraisal” (a tip of the hat to Nancy Reagan who had just come up with that catchy phrase, “Just Say No to Drugs”; I knew that annual appraisals were a bigger problem than drugs in the federal workplace). And last year, I’m reading the paper and I see that the latest trend in business is to do away with annual performance appraisals because they don’t work, are time-consuming, and often de-motivate (Washington Post, July 22, 2015, p. A-15). Hey, I can’t help it if I’ve often been ahead of my time, a frigging genius in my own mind. So would you like to see into the future, know what is the right thing to do decades before your peers figure it out? Well then, Poopsie, you should keep reading this here newsletter and attending our seminars as the secrets of the employment law universe are revealed to you. Also, somebody please tell OPM that Wiley was right in 1981, and that the annual performance appraisal system it invented STILL should be abolished. It’s never too late to get on board the FELTG wisdom-train.
Vehicle Misuse, Wile E. Coyote, and Settlement Agreements
By Barbara Haga If only our business had a list of rules that would always produce a successful result. If the MSPB had a checklist (for example, like a pilot has) of things that always had to be followed to ensure your case would be sustained, we would have many...
Here We Go Again
By William Wiley I am so tired of this. Once more, we have an agency head that is being given bad advice by his employment law practitioners, thereby embarrassing himself and the civil service on Capitol Hill and in the press. Here’s the scenario that repeats itself...
Agencies: Bring the Right People to the Table to Talk About Settlement and Make Sure They Have Authority!
By Deryn Sumner As we’ve talked about a few times in this space, in August 2015 the EEOC released a revised version of its Management Directive 110 (MD-110), which relates to federal sector EEO complaints processing. One change to MD-110 that not everyone has caught...
Playing Favorites in Selections and Promotions: Not EEO, But Still a Bad Idea
By Deborah Hopkins I love it when I teach a webinar and after it’s over, participants email questions as follow-up. Here’s one that I got after last week’s webinar on The Latest Developments in LGBTQ+ Discrimination: What Agencies and Employees Need to Know: Dear...
EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations Certifies First Federal Sector Class Action of 2016
By Deryn Sumner On June 1, 2016, the EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations certified what appears to be the first federal sector EEO class action of 2016 in Candice B., et al. v. Dep’t of Homeland Security, EEOC No. 0120160714 (June 1, 2016). The Commission reversed...
A Collection of Odds and Ends
By William Wiley Every now and then a case comes along that contains a bunch of good learning points, but does not actually cut much new grass on the lawn of federal employment law jurisprudence. Here are some things we learn and are reminded of in the judge’s...
Equal Pay for Equal Work: Recent Federal Sector Equal Pay Decisions
By Deryn Sumner Although claims of unequal pay occur less in the federal government than in the private sector, thanks to the published salary scales issued by OPM, they do still occur. As a reminder, EPA claims can be filed by either male or female employees. In...
In Case You Still Believe in Santa Claus
By William Wiley Ah, the innocence of youth. Magical beings enter your home and leave gifts, mom and dad are asexual, and our political leaders are making rational decisions based on a careful assessment of the evidence and argument. Sadly, as adults, we find out that...