FederalDaily - September 30, 2005

USPS, Unions Sign Agreement Following Hurricane Displacements

The U.S. Postal Service announce that it and two of its unions have reached agreements that address employee reassignment and other work issues resulting from Hurricane Katrina. The agreements are with the American Postal Workers Union and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. General principles of the agreements are:

• Employees who are allowed to work where they have relocated will be treated as voluntary temporary reassignments.
• Affected employees may be employed as needed at any location in order to provide employment and maintain work efficiency.
• Affected employees will be given an opportunity to seek permanent voluntary transfer to other work locations.
• A "liberal leave" policy is in effect for affected employees.

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Service to America Medals Awarded

Nine federal employees received the prestigious 2005 Service to America Medals on Sept. 28, including:

• Orlando Figueroa, a NASA employee from Silver Spring, Maryland,
• Barbara Turner of Falls Church, Virginia, and recently retired from USAID,
• Kevin McAleenan of Washington, D.C., Director of the Office of Anti-Terrorism at Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security,
• Elizabeth Grossman, an attorney at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from Brooklyn, New York,
• Alan Estevez of Washington, D.C., a Department of Defense employee,
• Steven Bice, a Centers for Disease Control employee from Atlanta, Georgia,
• Tobin Bradley of Washington, D.C., a State Department employee,
• Subhashree Madhavan and the Rembrandt Project Team of the National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics at the National Institutes of Health, and
• Terence Lutes, an IRS employee from Alexandria, Virginia.

For more on the awards, go to www.servicetoamericamedals.org.

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Grain Inspection Jobs Remain Federal

Grain inspectors working for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Shipyard Administration (GIPSA), Department of Agriculture, received support from both the House and Senate recently. Both the House and Senate have passed legislation that would keep the grain inspectors’ work federal—instead of allowing it to be privatized as earlier proposed. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union representing the grain inspectors, praised Congress for rejecting attempts to privatize the work. This function was first federalized in 1976. AFGE said the bulk of the inspectors work in four field offices located in New Orleans, La.; Galveston, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and Toledo, Ohio.

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Lynndie England Sentenced to Three Years

The Army announced that Pfc. Lynndie England, administrative clerk, was sentenced to three years of confinement on Sept. 27 for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. She was sentenced at Fort Hood’s Williams Judicial Center in Texas. England was found guilty of all charges: conspiracy, maltreatment of subordinates and indecent acts, by a panel of five officers. In addition to three years of incarceration, England was dishonorably discharged and reduced in rank to Private. The violations she committed occurred at Iraq’s Baghdad Central Confinement Facility at Abu Ghraib between October and December 2003. Photos of England posing, smiling, with abused prisoners have been shown in the media.

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