A group of 10 U.S. senators is demanding answers from the Biden administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) about why it appears bent on covering up the extent to which federal employees spend some or all of their workday engaged in union business instead of working for U.S. taxpayers.
Led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), the group’s Dec. 14 oversight letter to OPM director Kiran Ahuja is based on and cites a Freedom Foundation report published on Nov. 27, and corresponding Fox News reporting, documenting how OPM removed pages on its website explaining and documenting “official time” use across the federal workforce and the corresponding costs to federal taxpayers.
Also known as taxpayer-funded union time, official time refers to a currently legal practice in which federal employees who also serve as union officers spend time at work tending to union affairs instead of performing the job for which they were hired, all while continuing to receive their full federal salary and benefits. It is not uncommon for union officials to be on full-time official time for years or even decades on end.
As the Freedom Foundation report explained, since the late 1990s OPM has regularly reported on the amount and costs of official time use in the federal workforce every year or two. However, not only has OPM failed to produce a single report on official time so far in the three years of Biden’s presidency, but it has removed pages on its website archiving its historical reports on the subject, replacing them instead with pro-union materials.
Given President Biden’s prompt reversal of Trump administration policies designed to limit official time use and the current administration’s active efforts to increase the unionization of federal employees, it is likely that any updated study of taxpayer-funded union time would show a dramatic spike in the amount of time used and the associated costs.
In their letter, the senators pose the following questions to OPM:
- “Why was the webpage documenting official time reports removed from your website?
- When will the OPM issue its next official time report?
- What is the most up-to-date estimate for yearly ‘official time’ conducted by federal employees?
- When will OPM make public the latest estimates of ‘official time’ conducted by federal employees?”
The senators — who, in addition to Blackburn, include Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Budd (R-NC), Mike Braun (R-IN), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), James Lankford (R-OK.), Roger Marshall (R-KS.), and John Barrasso (R-WY) — demand that OPM respond by Jan. 14, 2024.
