Olympia, Wash. — The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which serves as “the chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the Federal Government,” has directed federal agencies to report the amount of union work performed by their employees at taxpayer expense in fiscal year 2024.
After more than two years of reporting and advocacy by the Freedom Foundation and congressional Republicans, OPM’s directive reinstates a practice instituted by President Trump via executive order in his first term and subsequently discontinued by the Biden administration.
In its Feb. 27 memo, OPM instructed agency heads to administer the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), the law governing collective bargaining by federal employees “in a manner consistent with the requirements of an effective and efficient government” and “to authorize taxpayer-funded union time only in amounts that are reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest and to monitor its use to see that it is used efficiently.”
The memo also directs agencies to submit information about the use of “taxpayer-funded union time information for Fiscal Year 2024” to OPM by March 14.
While the FSLMRS allows federal employees a general right to use “official time” to engage in certain union activities while continuing to receive their federal salary, the amount and regulation of such taxpayer-funded union time has varied sharply between recent presidential administrations.
In Nov. 2023, the Freedom Foundation reported that OPM had not only stopped reporting on the amount of official time used by federal employees — as it had done under presidents of both parties since the late 1990s — but had taken down the page on its website housing years of reports on the use and cost of official time to taxpayers, all while promoting expanded use of taxpayer-funded union time.
The following month, citing the Freedom Foundation’s investigation, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and nine other Republican U.S. Senators sent an oversight letter to OPM demanding to know why the webpage was removed and whether OPM would publish any further updates on taxpayer-funded union time.
After Biden’s OPM director responded that her agency had no intention of restoring the official time webpage, much less conducting another study on the costs of taxpayer-funded union time, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) introduced the Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Transparency Act, which would require each federal agency to track and annually report the amount of time its employees spend on union business and the cost of such official time to taxpayers.
When announcing the legislation in March 2024, both offices cited the fact that, as the Freedom Foundation had reported, “Biden’s OPM stopped publishing reports and removed a repository of information with official time usage in the federal government for over ten years.”
The next month, in an op-ed for The Hill, the Freedom Foundation called on policymakers to “require each federal agency to track and annually report the amount of time its employees spend on union business and the cost of such official time to taxpayers.”
Additional congressional inquiries regarding official time use were made by congressional Republicans to various federal agencies, including a June 2024 letter from Reps. James Comer (R-KY), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and Scott Perry (R-PA), and an October 2024 letter from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) — both of which referenced the Freedom Foundation’s research.
Following President Trump’s victory in Nov. 2024, the Freedom Foundation encouraged the transition team to institute official time reporting requirements under OPM’s existing legal authority.
Most recently, a Feb. 11, 2025, letter to OPM from Sen. Ernst and Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) noted, as the Freedom Foundation had reported, that OPM under Biden “intentionally concealed the costs of taxpayer-funded union time” and asked OPM for information about the extent of official time use in the federal government.
The last time OPM issued a report on official time, it estimated federal bureaucrats spent 2.6 million hours on taxpayer-funded union time in fiscal year 2019 at a cost of about $135 million.
“His administration’s shameful measures to encourage federal civil servants to spend their day working on union business and to shield the practice from public and congressional scrutiny are a perfect example of how President Biden’s drive to be the most pro-union president in history often came at the expense of U.S. taxpayers,” said Maxford Nelsen, the Freedom Foundation’s director of research and government affairs.
“It’s immensely rewarding to see the joint efforts of government watchdogs like the Freedom Foundation, congressional Republicans, and the crack team in President Trump’s administration produce such a meaningful result, but much work remains to be done to refocus the federal bureaucracy on serving the public good instead of the special interests of radical Left government union bosses,” Nelsen continued.
“Implementing reasonable limits on the use of taxpayer-funded union time, as done during President Trump’s first term, should be next on the list.”
Contact:
Arielle Brown
Vice president of communications
abrown@freedomfoundation.com
