Union Question

[barkley]

Does any one know whether either NTEU or AFGE plan on filing an amicus brief in regards to the AALJ complaint?  Is there anything the Association of Attorney Advisors can do or any of us as individuals?

[jrh83]

There are some big problems with attempting a class action.

1.  The unions [and the Association for that matter] have members who were:

a. burned by OPM;
b. on the old register; and
c. who made the cut and want the new register to go forward.

This means pursuing the interests of one group is adverse to the others.

2. Management is likely to view anyone who sues as an "obstructionist" who is compounding the backlog.

3. Such litigation is very expensive with no guarantee of a "win".

4. Even a "win" is likely to be an empty win [e.g. you win the right to force OPM to rescore your app, but OPM gives you a new bad score on a different ground.

[jandea]

That makes sense to me.  Clearly, members of this association have conflicting interests in seeing the ALJ hiring go forward.  On another topic.....

What position will AFGE and NTEU take on the attorney-advisor program discussed on August 9th in the Federal Register.  I have been trying to get someone in AFGE to comment without success.  Managment in this office knows nothing.  Any insight?  The members of the association should be in agreement on this issue.

[barkley]

Since we have broken into two topics:

(1)  I can see why the unions or our Association would not want to file a class action law suit.  I am just troubled by not speaking out in some way, the silence stands in support of the inaccurrate information contained in the AALJ law suit.  I know I did not have any advanced notice and in my experience, some of the best judges I haved worked for have been former agency attorneys.  I have not found them to be any more "pro-SSA" than the outside hires.  To the contrary, they seem to be more capable of applying the law rather than just using a gut check to find disability.

(2)  I doubt AFGE will do anything.  When I saw the announcement, I sent a copy to my HOD and HOCALJ.  My HOCALJ has indicated that after they have read through the announcement, they want to meet with the SAs and talk about how to effectuate the new process, suggesting this is something that will have to be worked out office by office, just like the current system where each office determines how its Senior Attorneys will be used.