NTEU's 'Telling Our Stories' campaign grew from the idea that our members do interesting and important work for our country—but it often goes unnoticed. We wanted to change that—and the best spokespeople to talk about your jobs are you!
Read MoreClaim Your Free 2019 Federal Employees Almanac
Members of NTEU Chapter 280 still have time to claim the remaining free hard copies of the 2019 Federal Employees Almanac, an incredibly useful resource for everything from understanding your Thrift Savings Plan and Flexible Spending Account to details about retirement and post-retirement processes, rights, and benefits…
Read MoreMembers Get Free Access to Federal Health Plans Guide
As an exclusive benefit to NTEU dues-paying members, members will again have access to Consumers’ Checkbook’s online Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees and Annuitants, beginning the first day of the federal open season, November 12, 2018.
The guide will be available through NTEU’s web site starting November 12, www.nteu.org, in the Benefit section throughout Open Season (November 12, 2018 – December 10, 2018)….
Read MoreChapter Election May 22 - June 5 (noon)
DATE: 3/30/2018
SUBJECT: Notice of Nomination and Election of Chapter Officers, NTEU Chapter 280
FROM: NTEU Chapter 280 Nominations and Election Committee (John Ravenscroft, Chair; Victor Farren; Michele Indermark: Craig Beasley; Alan Margolis, Members)
TO: NTEU Chapter 280 Members
In accordance with Part IV of the NTEU Bylaws, this is the Official Notice for Nominations and Election of Officers for Chapter 280. Chapter 280 will hold an electronic, secret ballot election using ElectionsOnline beginning on May 22, 2018 for the following offices.....
Union Prime
Tired of once-a-week communication from the Union? Got a boss that's requiring a lot more of your time than you would like? Want extra time and quicker access to your Union representatives than most employees?
NTEU Chapter 280 announces Union Prime, a special subscription service offering:
- FREE hotline access direct to the Chapter President, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week
- ADVANCE notice of personnel changes before non-Prime union members
- FREE Same-Day release-date delivery on all Union paraphernalia
- FREE streaming video of your Chapter 280 officials 24 hours a day so you are the first to know of important developments
- GUARANTEED arbitration of stupid cases that we would never arbitrate in a million years for normal members
- FREE once a year dunk-tank benefit where you get to send your manager to the bottom of a tank of ice-cold water
- FREE streaming music of Union-oriented theme music to keep your union spirits up
- 2-Day access to Administrator Pruitt and his top deputies*
- 2 FREE waivers of disciplinary action from management for actions that would normally get you in deep trouble
- Prime Reading: You can borrow Union books, magazines, and more from the Union Prime Reading catalog and read them on your tablet, e-reader, or reading apps for iOS and Android.
- Don't need your discipline waivers and other benefits? Earn rewards for future purchases.
Union Prime is only $99 per month more than the standard NTEU dues. NTEU Chapter 280 will roll out new benefits for Union Prime members throughout the year.
*not available in some offices like the Office of Research and Development
NTEU Members Get Free $1,000 Death & Dismemberment Insurance
In case you needed another reason to join NTEU as a member, all NTEU members are automatically covered by a $1,000 Accidental Death & Dismemberment Policy -- Free! There is no premium to be paid; the only requirement is that they remain an NTEU member in good standing.
Members can get basic policy information....
Read MoreConsumer's Checkbook Health Guide Access & Discounts
NTEU members get free access to the Consumers’ Checkbook’s online guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees and Annuitants. This user-friendly, interactive guide allows FEHBP participants and prospective enrollees to rank and compare plans, as well as gauge plan features and flexibility based on doctor selection and other factors. It also provides information and plan comparisons for the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program. Currently only 2017 plans are available. 2018 plans go live in the guide on November 13, 2017, the first day of federal benefits open season.
Also, NTEU members are eligible for a 30-percent discounted subscription to Consumers’ CHECKBOOK magazine, which rates local service providers for quality and price in seven local markets. They rate the best doctors, dentists, auto repair shops, plumbers, veterinarians, carpet cleaners, roofers and much more.
If you're already a member, thank you! If you're not, click here to join now and get your discounts!
New Chief Steward
Incoming Chief Steward Anne Pastorkovich.
We've passed the Chief-Steward torch recently in Chapter 280, with Chief Steward Alan Carpien's retirement. The Chapter Executive Board voted to replace Alan, upon his retirement, with NTEU Secretary Anne Pastorkovich.
Alan leaves us after serving 48 years in the federal government, with 37 years of that at EPA. We were fortunate to have Alan for the last six months of his federal service as he poured all his energy into serving our members.
Outgoing Chief Steward Alan Carpien.
Upon his departure, Alan said: "Please convey to the NTEU Board and membership my thanks for their allowing me to serve as Chief Steward for the last six months. I hope I have been able to help some people and even learned a thing or two. Happy New Year to all and best of luck as you continue in your careers." Alan made an enormous difference for us settling several grievances favorably for our members and handling numerous other member difficulties. We are very sad to see him go.
The sadness of his departure is tempered somewhat by the fact that he will be replaced by equally-capable Anne Pastorkovich, longtime Union official and Executive Board Secretary. Anne is also an attorney with the skills necessary for the Chief Steward position. Anne assumes her seat on January 9, 2017.
Anne's departure left a hole in our Executive Board, however. Our Secretary position remains open. If you're interested in serving as Secretary, please contact NTEU Chapter 280 President Diane Lynne. Remember, only dues-paying members may serve on the Executive Board. If you're interested, please visit our membership page to get the details on Chapter membership.
Open Season Ends December 12
Don't forget that "open season" for federal employees ends at midnight on Monday, December 12, 2016. Open season is the time when you can change your health, dental, and vision plans and create a healthcare flexible spending account without a qualifying life event. OPM has a countdown clock, along with more information on open season here.
NTEU members get FREE access to the awesome Washington Consumers' Checkbook Guide to Health Plans, which lets you see how the plans compare on price and features. If you want Guide access and have not yet joined, please contact NTEU Executive Vice President Amer Al-Mudallal directly at 202-566-2789 to process your membership form. Since Guide access is provided through NTEU's national website, and membership-form processing normally takes some time, we'll need to handle your form specially to ensure you get full access to the NTEU website before the deadline.
If you've already joined but still do not have access, please contact NTEU's national membership coordinator Margaret Allen at 202-572-5500, provide her your name and full social security number, and let her know that you need access soon to the NTEU website members-only materials.
In addition to the Guide to Health Plans, members also save money through a bunch of discounts provided by NTEU. If you take full advantage of these discounts, you can effectively offset the entire cost of your yearly membership. Click here to see a complete list of member benefits in this PDF.
NTEU Fights for You
Click above to download a flyer to hang in your office or cube.
There are new threats to the important, hard work you do every day at the EPA. NTEU is here to serve as your advocate through uncertainty.
NTEU is YOUR Union working on:
- Educating Congress and the administration on what you do
- Defending EPA employees
- Fighting threats to your agency
Now we must stand together. Join NTEU and Join the fight for EPA employees.
Click the image at the right to download a flyer with this message. Hang it in your cube or office, in your break room, and on community bulletin boards around the office.
Open Season & Consumers' CheckBook Guide to Health Plans
Become a member and get free access!
Don't forget that "open season" started this week. You can now change health, dental, and vision plans, and start, change, or end your federal savings account (FSA-Feds). You must make your selection by December 12, when open season ends. After that, you can only make changes with a "qualifying life event."
If you are a dues-paying member of NTEU, you get free access to the Washington Consumers' Checkbook's Guide to Health Plans by joining NTEU Chapter 280 at this page. Then, when you receive your NTEU membership number, get access to the free Guide to Health Plans benefit by clicking here.
If you're having problems getting access to the member's-only section of the NTEU.org website, it may be because NTEU does not have your social security number or has not yet issued a membership number. Please contact NTEU Membership Records Coordinator Margaret Allen at 202-572-5500, ext. 7004 to find out about your membership status and get access.
Federal Benefits "Open Season" & Free Consumer's Checkbook Plan Comparison
How to get your free Washington Consumer's Checkbook's Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees.
Once a year the federal government lets its employees make changes to their health, dental, and vision plans and flexible spending accounts without having what's known as a qualifying life event, such as a marriage, birth, death, or other qualifying event. This once-a-year time to change is known as "open season" in fed-speak.
This year's open season runs from November 14 to December 12, 2016.
But how do you decide which health plan is right for you? As a benefit of being an NTEU member, NTEU provides free access to the Washington Consumer's Checkbook's Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees, which normally costs $10 per person. This excellent, easy-to-use guide takes you through a few simple steps to find the best health plan for you and your family. Find every plan available to you ranked by estimated out-of-pocket costs and more.
Not a member of NTEU, visit our Join page and sign up now to get your free health benefits guide starting November 14. The image, above, is NTEU's publication on this free access (click it to download a PDF document).
Union Member Rights
Union members have a number of federally-guaranteed rights as detailed in 29 C.F.R. § 458.4. The Department of Labor publication shown at right details those rights in an easily digestible form. Click the image to download a PDF of the document.
You can also always find a link to these rights on our website's JOIN page.
Effecting Positive Organizational Change at EPA
by Lou Kerestesy
Too often, when government attempts to change, it ends up reinforcing behaviors it doesn’t want.
Government is under such tremendous pressure to improve that change is the new normal. Yet many in government feel worn down by change that doesn’t improve much for them or their customers. Agencies that undergo “change management” efforts make three common mistakes that inhibit change and reinforce undesirable behavior:
- Most organizational change is conducted from the top, where the view is too broad to see specific behaviors that need to be different. A top-down view lacks information from lower and peripheral parts of the organization needed to make change stick. It also mistakenly assumes leaders control or can influence the right change mechanisms throughout the organization.
- Most organizational change is about the organization, not behavior. Goals, benefits, strategies, new processes and procedures, tools, re-organizations — most are about the organization. Leaders rarely describe specific existing behaviors in need of change, or what desired behaviors would look like.
- Most change efforts take the wrong approach to changing behavior. Top-down, organizationally focused change requires compliance, and compliance relies on punishment and penalty (with some negative reinforcement). These are great for preventing, decreasing and stopping unwanted behavior, but not for promoting new behavior.
Fixes to these shortcomings are straightforward.
Leadership can integrate top-down and bottoms-up approaches by talking to the people who will be impacted by change. The "what" and "why" of change should be communicated from the top down and from the center out. But information about the how of change needs to be communicated up and in. Hold town hall meetings, set up a cross-agency workgroup, take surveys — find ways to ask people in the organization “how would we do that?” and, periodically, “how’s it going?”
An easy fix to sync behavioral and organizational change is to identify not just the current activity that leadership want to be different, but also the behavior. Explain what’s wrong with current behaviors and what triggered the need to change them. Describe new behavior that leadership wants to see. Ask people who do the work to tell you how their behavior would have to change to be more of something that is the target of the change effort — more innovative, customer-service oriented, risk tolerant, etc.
Finally, promote new, desired behavior using positive reinforcement. But beware, that doesn’t mean pats on the back and bonuses.
Everything we do produces a consequence. When a behavior changes our environment in ways we like, we repeat it. When it changes our environment in ways we don’t like, we stop. According to Aubrey Daniels in “Bringing Out the Best in People,” we do what we do because of what happens after. To change the right behaviors in the right way is to understand what reinforces them and to modify reinforcements accordingly.
Consider this example: If contracting officers spend more time with customers to produce better requirements and solicitations but miss deadlines for awards and extensions, what happens? They’re not rewarded for better contracts and forgiven for missing deadlines. They get in trouble for missing deadlines because the real reinforcement in their world is for throughput, not better quality.
Organizations get the behaviors they reinforce. If they modify reinforcements they can change behavior like a magnet aligns metal shavings. One powerful positive reinforcement an organization can offer is to enable someone to improve what they do to benefit themselves and their customer, and let them carry out it without getting in trouble.
Organizations will likely find they must prioritize — that as their people do more of something, better, they have less time for something else. But that’s also what change management is about, isn’t it?
Lou Kerestesy is the Founder and Chief Innovator at GovInnovators and has 30 years’ experience in federal, state and local government. GovInnovators mission is to help government serve best by innovating itself, from the inside out. Lou can be contacted by clicking here. Lou's full bio at LinkedIn.
Commentary originally published on fedscoop.com and used by permission of the author here.
What to Do When You've Been Wronged at EPA
The agency and its employees, through its unions, agreed on procedures to challenge actions that we don't think are fair, appropriate, or accurate. We call that process a "grievance," and it's detailed in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), Article 34.
EPA guarantees that a grievance filed by an employee "does not affect the employee's standing with the Agency." Employees are assured by EPA that they will be free from "restraint, interference, coercion, discrimination, intimidation or reprisal" for filing a grievance or participating in the grievance process. See CBA, Article 3, Section 3.
Prior to filing a grievance, we typically try to reach out to your manager to discuss the matter, with your permission, of course. We find that we can sometimes resolve the issue informally prior to resorting to the formal grievance process. But where our informal contact bears no fruit, where you're uncomfortable with us reaching out informally to your manager, or where it is strategically disadvantageous to do so, we then move to a formal grievance.
Process
The grievance process is established to resolve issues at the lowest level possible. To accomplish this, the agency and NTEU agreed on a three-step process....
Website Changes
We wanted to mention a couple of cool changes to the NTEU Chapter 280 website that we recently activated. At the top of the home page, for example, you'll note a new news panel that shows you the most recent posts from our news blog. In addition to the first three most recent posts, the panel will rotate automatically through the most recent 15 or so posts, three posts at a time. This saves you time, letting you quickly see what's new, and allowing you to only click the stories you're interested in.
In addition to the home page news panel, we also have a news sidebar that sits next to each article you're viewing. This side bar allows you to move directly from one story that interests you to another without needing to go back to the main news listing.
We've had a Twitter feed for a while. But you've had to navigate to our Twitter page to view our posts or subscribe through your favorite Twitter app. Now you can visit the home page and scroll to the bottom. You'll see the most recent tweets of the Chapter right on our website.
If you have any other suggestions to make the website more useful to you, or to provide story ideas, please make them using our Contact page.
Pioneering Fulltime Telework at EPA (Part 1 of 2)
Last summer, my spouse, who works for U.S. Department of Justice, was promoted and reassigned to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like many couples, we discussed and debated whether this move made sense for our individual careers and our life together as a married couple. I believed my twenty year career with EPA, an Agency with a mission I loved and worked so hard to further, was coming to an abrupt end.
Around the same time, a new collective bargaining agreement between the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) entered into effect for all employees in the bargaining unit, expanding telework options to include fulltime telework. I explored the notion of fulltime telework with my management and the union. I am happy to say that I am writing this blog from Albuquerque, New Mexico as an EPA Headquarters employee assigned to the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA).....
Read MoreNew NTEU National Website
Some of the new members-only features of the new NTEU website.
NTEU's national office recently unveiled its new website, and it rocks! It includes a new member page tailored to you with news specifically about EPA, new access to member benefits, a legislative action center, and more, designed to give you even more for your paying membership.
If you're having trouble accessing the new website's members-only section, check out this login tips and tricks sheet. And if you're still having problems, email webhelp@nteu.org.
Want to get all these awesome benefits but you're not a member? Visit our Join page and fill out the SF-1187 form to start your membership today!