Federal Daily - January 6, 2010

Griffin Moves Into Deputy Director Spot At OPM

The Office of Personnel Management announced Jan. 4 that Christine M. Griffin has been confirmed in her appointment as deputy director of the agency.

Griffin formerly was a commissioner of the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, where she was instrumental in shaping workplace enforcement policies.

Griffin has been a vocal supporter of federal workforce diversity, as well as a proponent of women’s rights and the rights of individuals with disabilities. Notably, in June 2006, Griffin launched the LEAD Initiative—Leadership for the Employment of Americans with Disabilities—at the EEOC, to help managers remedy the significant under-employment of individuals with severe disabilities in the federal government. Details on that initiative are available at: www.eeoc.gov/initiatives/lead/index.html.
 
Before her appointment to the EEOC, Griffin served as executive director of the Disability Law Center in Boston from 1996 to 2005.

As OPM’s deputy director, Griffin will “play a key role in shaping and managing the federal government’s 1.9 million employees,” the agency said in a statement.

“I am very pleased to be able to work with Christine on important issues that directly affect the federal government and its workforce,” OPM Director John Berry said.

To see more, go to: www.opm.gov/news/christine-griffin-appointed-as-opm-deputy-director,1499.aspx.

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Postal Workers Union Launches Survey Of Small Office Employees

The American Postal Workers Union kicked off 2010 by conducting a survey of postal employees in smaller postal offices—often employees “whose hours have been reduced while managerial hours have been increased,” according to a Jan. 5 APWU release. 

Small-facility employees are being sought to complete a questionnaire about their hours and working conditions—a questionnaire employees can learn more about by consulting the union’s Web site.  

The call for small-office employee input comes as working hours for part-time flexible clerks continue to be severely cut back at many locations—a sore subject for postal workers, and one that APWU President William Burrus explores in a column in the latest American Postal Worker magazine.

In that column, Burrus notes that the APWU’s bargaining agreement sharply limits management’s right to take work from clerks and shift it onto other employees. But, Burrus reports, management continues to ignore arbitrators’ rulings on the issue, and managers keep increasing the workload of postmasters, postmaster-reliefs, and other kinds of supervisors while reducing clerks’ hours.

“While the APWU-USPS contract recognizes the right of supervisors and postmasters to perform bargaining-unit work in small offices, arbitrators have repeatedly concluded that supervisory work cannot increase at the expense of work for clerks,” Burrus wrote. “[Yet] some employees have had hours reduced to two hours per week; others have been forced to travel to distant offices; many have surrendered — and terminated their employment. In most instances, these reductions should not have taken place.”

APWU, meanwhile, is pressing a series of national-level grievances demanding that postal managers return the work that they have taken away from clerks.

For more information, go to: www.apwu.org, and click on the text reading “We Want To Hear From You.”

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TSP Returns for December 2009

Rates of Return were updated on January 4, 2010.

The monthly G, F, C, S, and I Fund returns represent the actual total rates of return used in the monthly allocation of earnings to participant accounts. The returns are shown after deduction of accrued TSP administrative expenses. The F, C, S, and I Fund returns also reflect the deduction of trading costs and accrued investment management fees. The most current G, F, C, S, and I Fund rates of return are shown above. Returns are updated after the monthly allocation of earnings, usually by the fourth business day of the month.

For more on TSP, click here.

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