September 2022 Federal Employment Law Training Group Newsletter
If I Had a Bucket List, This Ride Would Be on It
Last month I had the pleasure of taking a bicycle trip through several national parks and forests in the U.S. and Canada, including Glacier National Park. As part of the itinerary, I rode from West Glacier up the Going to the Sun Road, which is consistently rated one of the top road bike rides in the country. The climb wasn’t easy but the payoff at Logan Pass was worth it – and the downhill was a dream! (The bear sightings weren’t too shabby either.)
I hope you were able to get a break over the summer, as well. Now, it’s the final push to the end of the fiscal year, and time to start planning for FY 2023. At FELTG we are always here to help, so if there are any training areas you need us to cover or if you have ideas for future sessions you’d like us to consider, send an email to info@feltg.com, and we’ll be happy to take a look.
In this month’s newsletter, we discuss AWOL employees, disability harassment, the importance of jurisdiction, medical confidentiality, and much more.
Take care,
Deborah J. Hopkins, FELTG President
Employees Can Be AWOL Even if at Work or Working Elsewhere
By Dan Gephart, September 12, 2022 Only six percent of American workers who have been teleworking since the pandemic began want to return to the physical workplace, according to a recent poll. You know that there are more than a handful of people at your agency who...
EEOC Case Illustrates the Ugliness of Harassment Based on Disability
By Deborah Hopkins, September 12, 2022 Members of the FELTG Nation are likely familiar with EEO cases where agencies fail to accommodate a complainant’s disability, but there’s another ugly side of disability discrimination that sometimes arises – hostile work...
The New Board Affirms Several Established Discipline Principles
By William Wiley, September 12, 2022 Best practices in our business are worth restating on occasion, particularly when we get new adjudicators at MSPB. From an otherwise unremarkable recent Board final order, we are refreshingly reminded of the following principles...
Effective Performance Plans are Key to Supervising Teleworkers
By Barbara Haga, September 12, 2022 I recently led a virtual training session on creating effective performance narratives as part of FELTG’s Federal Workplace 2022: Accountability, Challenges & Trends event, where I discussed several issues related to performance...
Confidentially Speaking: Legitimate Reason Needed to Request Medical Info
By Michael Rhoads, September 12, 2022 Think of a personal secret you’ve been keeping. Now imagine that, as part of an investigation, you must divulge that secret. You assume that the investigators will keep the secret confidential, only to find out that personal...
The Good News: Jurisdiction Matters to FLRA, MSPB, EEOC — It Better Matter to You
By Ann Boehm, September 12, 2022 The decision-making entities in Federal employment and labor law have distinct jurisdictional limitations. Based upon some interesting recent decisions from several of these entities, they take those limitations seriously. The Federal...