December 2020 Federal Employment Law Training Group Newsletter
A Hopeful Look Ahead
Happy holidays to the FELTG Nation. It’s been quite a year and we are cautiously hopeful that better things are in store in 2021, especially with the positive vaccine news from the past few weeks.
That considered, we have decided to put some of our most popular open enrollment classes on the calendar for the second part of next year with the hope that we will be able to meet again in person in just a few months’ time. Check out the FELTG website for the details on when and where we’ll be holding MSPB Law Week, EEOC Law Week, Employee Relations Week, Managing Federal Employee Accountability, and more.
Our instructors are also available to travel to your agencies for onsite training (with precautions of course) any time you’d like, even before a vaccine is widely available. But if web-based training is still your comfort zone, we have a number virtual training classes and webinars that are open for registration now. With a lot of pending changes on the horizon, you know we’ll keep you updated on all the latest in the federal employment world.
And now it’s time for the final newsletter of 2020, where we cover more on the new OPM regs, Schedule F, a 2021 Wish List, and much more.
Our staff will be taking some well-deserved time off at the end of the year. The office will be closed from December 23 through January 3, and will be back on Monday, January 4.
Have a wonderful rest of the year,
Deborah J. Hopkins, FELTG President
OPM Finally Answers the Question About Notice of Appeal Rights at the Proposal Stage
By Deborah Hopkins, December 15, 2020 During our recent webinar on implementing the new OPM regulations on performance and conduct (if you missed it, you can still view the recording), the following question came in: There has been some discussion in my agency about...
Should Old Dismissals Be Forgot: EEOC Reverses More than A Third of Procedural Dismissals
By Meghan Droste, December 15, 2020 Somehow, despite it still feeling like it’s just April or May, it’s that time of year again — time to look back on where we’ve been (at home) and what we’ve done (a lot of video calls). In that spirit, this month I’m highlighting an...
The Good News: A Letter to Santa
By Ann Boehm, December 15, 2020 Dear Santa: I think I have been very good this year, although 2020 needs to be on the naughty list. I hope you and Mrs. Claus are doing OK during the pandemic. For Christmas this year, here are some Federal employment law things I’d...
Schedule F, Politicized Policy or Top-to-Bottom Transformation?
By Michael Rhoads, December 15, 2020 The Trump administration is looking to make sweeping changes to federal employment by introducing a new schedule which could, if fully implemented, convert career conditional employees to at-will employees. In the Executive Order,...
Don’t Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water
By Barbara Haga, December 15, 2020 This expression is bizarre – who would lose track of their baby in the bath? It is interesting, though. I did a bit of research. The phrase is German in origin and by the 1600s, it was commonly used and appeared in writings of...
Tips from the Other Side: Reassignments and Reasonable Accommodation
By Meghan Droste, December 15, 2020 We’ve made it, readers. It’s finally the end of 2020 and that seems like as good a time as any to wrap up our ongoing look at reasonable accommodation issues in this space. I’m sure we’ll touch on them again at some point in 2021,...
Have Discipline or Performance Problems? Take the Right Forking Path
By Dan Gephart, December 15, 2020 Back in pre-GPS days, my older brother and his wife were driving to a holiday celebration at her family’s house in a small backwoods New Jersey town. They were still many miles away from their destination when they hit a fork in the...
How Much Information Does an Employee Have a Right to at the Proposal Stage?
By Deb Hopkins and William Wiley, December 15, 2020 Here’s an email that recently came across the FELTG desk: Dear FELTG, Our agency has encountered an issue we haven't seen, and were wondering if you might have some insight. Typical for my agency's chapter 43...