Thanks to the hard work of our union staff and activists, the House passed its version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with several provisions that reflect AFGE members’ priorities at the Department of Defense.
AFGE applauds the passage of the bill, which will directly improve workers’ pay and job security and signify the critical role of civilian employees in serving our troops and maintaining our national defense.
AFGE’s NDAA wins in the House bill will, if passed into law:
- Restore the one-year probationary period for new employees in the Department of Defense beginning in 2023, ensuring they are treated the same as most other federal workers.
- Clarify and strengthen previously approved language that prohibits the use of arbitrary personnel caps when determining the number of employees needed to carry out mission requirements, which can increase costs and impair readiness as work is shifted to contractors or military.
- Require senior officials to complete and certify a checklist ensuring that statements of work and task orders submitted to contracting officers comply with longstanding statutes that prevent replacing DoD civilian employees with contractors, subject to annual DoD Inspector General reviews, and require that service contract budgets comply with these requirements.
- Revive reporting requirements on situations in which military members are pulled from training assignments or operational units to replace civilian employees, which is known as borrowed military manpower, and ensure its adverse effects on readiness reports to Congress are captured.
- Allow federal firefighters to trade shifts across multiple pay periods without decreasing their regular pay or triggering overtime pay requirements, ensuring that firehouses maintain staffing requirements and can keep communities safe while enabling firefighters to meet personal obligations without having to use annual leave.
- Freeze the number of Air National Guard dual-status military technicians at fiscal 2021 levels, rather than cutting the number as proposed by the administration, and reiterate previously approved language that prevents the involuntary conversion of dual status military technicians to Active Guard Reserve status.
- Provide all federal employees with two weeks of paid parental bereavement leave.
- Ensure that D.C. National Guard members who are federal civilian employees are entitled to leave without loss in pay or time from their civilian employment during mobilizations.
- Provide overtime pay for Navy employees working on vessels outside the continental U.S.
Want more wins like these?
Join AFGE and ask your coworkers to join AFGE. Your voice makes all of us stronger!
