The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued its latest report on “official time.” Official time is a term used to describe time spent by federal employee union representatives who receive their government salary and benefits while performing duties as a union official.

According to a press release from OPM: “Official time, more accurately referred to as ‘Taxpayer Funded Union Time’ is paid time spent by Federal employees performing representational work for a bargaining unit in lieu of their regularly assigned work. In other words, official time is treated as work time, thus is funded by the American taxpayers while no service to the taxpayer is performed.

According to the OPM report, the cost for this use of paid leave by federal employees acting on behalf of a union increased by 7.55 percent from Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 to FY 2016. The cost increased from… [for more, click here].

What of the information in this article surprised you? What confirmed any previous assumptions? How does this information apply to your agency?