May 20, 2004

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Yesterday I sat in on a conference call with the chapter presidents and Steve Keller to discuss Chairman Powell's speech at the Exchequer Club, taxation of travel on intervening weekends, and the DIRM C2 project.

PERSONNEL FLEXIBILITIES AND THE CHAIRMAN POWELL'S SPEECH

Management has approached NTEU about the personnel flexibilities and changes they wish to bring before Congress. FDIC’s intent (or what has been conveyed at this point) is that they are willing to sit down and draft joint changes which could be sold to Congress. Steve suspects they have gotten battered a bit in the press lately (ABA articles over Executive Pay/Bonus and other programs) and are experiencing problems with finding support. Because this is an election year, our legislative personnel feel the proposed personnel flexibilities would not make it to the Congress or the Senate during the current session. They base this on two things...first until the issues with DOD and Homeland Security personnel changes are cleared up this would be too contentious an issue for anyone to sponsor. Secondly the session is shorter this year because of the election and the Chairman has admitted that he was not prepared to submit anything to Congress at this point. We were told the package had been sent to OMB and OPM as required by statue. However, neither agency had done much with the proposal and probably will not until the issues with Homeland Security and DOD are cleared up. The consensus was that this probably does not stand a chance of making it to the hill this year let alone being implemented.

NTEU has agreed to meet with management within the next two to three weeks to discuss the proposed personnel flexibilities. Steve stated, in some respects changes were needed and we, if the changes were beneficial to the members we would support those. However, many of their requested changes do not fare well with NTEU. Until management backs off most of the egregious changes they will not receive any support from NTEU and we would fight their efforts to make the changes we do not support. The consensus is this probably does not stand a chance of making it to the hill this year let alone being implemented.

I am sure most of you have been asked what the union is going to do about this. At this point it is a bit difficult to start a PR campaign to fight something that has not even been proposed on the hill. Yes, we are all aware of the proposal, as is most of America, but the fact remains this has not made it any farther than OMB and OPM. Neither OPM nor OMB will devote too much time to this as they are currently embroiled in the DOD and Homeland Security personnel changes. However, our legislative staff has already been speaking with key Congressional personnel who chair committees and sub-committees of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees about our opposition to the flexibilities proposal. The position we are taking at this point is to work through our contacts to educate them on our position prior to FDIC finding sponsors (House/Senate) and getting the ultimate bill before the respective committees (House/Senate). It serves no purpose to start throwing rocks at management or initiate a pro-active PR campaign until we have sat down with management to discuss what they truly want to accomplish with personnel flexibilities and see the proposal submitted to OPM/OMB.

TAXATION ON TRAVEL – INTERVENING WEEKENDS

Steve has finally come up with tax law supporting our contention we are exempt. He has sent the information to management for review. Steve felt management did not like having to do this anymore than we did but felt compelled to do so because of the circumstances they were put in. He also felt management had not adequately researched the tax law and were waiting for NTEU to come up tax law supporting our position, therefore, helping them get out of the situation they were placed in by the ex-DOF travel guru, Ed B.

Management has not responded to the information submitted. However, until this is resolved travel on intervening weekends remains “status quo.”

DIRM C2 PROJECT

This is a continuation of the Deloitte Touché project started last year. The newest twist to this on-going never-ending process is to ask the DIRM employees to respond to a survey explaining just what they do. My understanding is that once the survey is completed and been analyzed, DIRM would be able to contract out any future positions created (either through attrition or created by qualified need). Steve thought the survey was designed to eliminate positions in DC. However, it could have possible side effects in the field as it might be the catalyst for phasing out the FOR position.  

Chapter 274 President Bob Hoshaw