AFGE ended 2024 with more victories for government workers and their families. From securing a pay increase for blue-collar workers to protecting collective bargaining rights for National Guard employees, union members continued to use our collective voice to speak out against unjust policies and proposals.
Here’s a look back at what we have achieved the past year. We can’t wait to win more victories in 2025!
AFGE’s two-decade fight paid off when the Office of Personnel Management took a huge step toward aligning the locality pay maps for employees on the Federal Wage System and General Schedule as recommended by the Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee (FPRAC), whose members include two AFGE representatives.
AFGE has been working to align FWS wage areas with GS locality pay areas across the country. Even though they work side-by-side in the same building for the same employer, the base pay has been determined differently for the two groups. Salaried workers have the same base pay throughout a GS locality, while hourly WG workers have had base pay that has varied even within the boundaries of a GS locality.
OPM’s proposed rule was published in the Federal Register with a 60-day public comment period. Once finalized, about 15,000 blue-collar workers, most of whom work for the Department of Defense, will get the pay adjustment they deserve.
An amendment offered by Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., to the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act would have reclassified National Guard dual-status technicians as military personnel, not federal civilian employees. Under the Austin Scott amendment, the dual-status technicians would be employees of the National Guard under the authority of the governors, not the civil service. That would mean the loss of collective bargaining rights for the technicians.
The amendment, however, was not voted on because of AFGE’s active outreach to House members of both parties explaining the reasons for its strong opposition. The amendment would have effectively reversed the ruling of the Supreme Court, which last year found that dual status technicians are more civilian than military.
This new seven-year contract comes after years of hard work by the members of AFGE TSA Council 100. The new contract was agreed upon on March 5 after months of collective bargaining between the agency and the union. Leaders of TSA local unions nationwide ratified the contract on March 11.
The new contract features several crucial new rights for TSOs, including a negotiated grievance and arbitration procedure to make it easier to resolve cases, new language to protect our members from unfair discipline, new uniform rights and higher allowance, better leave conditions, and the ability to bargain over local issues. It represents the farthest TSA officers have come in the fight for Title 5 rights.
AFGE earlier this year formed the Defense Health Agency (DHA) Council to improve working conditions for 38,000 bargaining unit employees AFGE represents under a new master agreement reached between DHA and the council. AFGE also appointed members to the newly created council. The interim appointments will last until full council elections are held at a date to be determined. Once finalized, the DHA council will become one of the five largest agency-level bargaining units within AFGE.
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., was leading a union-busting effort at the Department of Defense by trying to attack the official time federal workers use to work with management to fix issues at their facilities, including understaffing and morale. He offered an amendment to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act on the House floor to require the Department of Defense to report on the use of official time, the decades-old practice that’s often misrepresented to slander unions and federal workers.
Thanks to AFGE’s efforts educating members of Congress on the issue, his amendment failed with 23 Republicans joining all voting Democrats in opposition.
President Joe Biden issued an executive order creating labor-management forums at federal agencies to promote better relationships between management and front-line workers. The EO had a real impact as a month later, USAID and AFGE Local 1534 signed a charter establishing USAID’s Labor Management Forum to foster labor-management collaboration.
In 2023, AFGE grew by 5.5%, making our union the fastest growing large union in the U.S. AFGE is continuing the growth we saw in 2023, and as of mid-December, we’re up to more than 304,000 members.
Federal employees working for the U.S. Army at two locations in Germany voted to join AFGE, part of a continuing effort to expand AFGE’s representation of federal employees working in Europe. In the first election, information technology employees at the Army Enterprise Service Desk, 2nd Signal Brigade, located at Kaiserslautern, Germany, voted to join AFGE, extending representation under labor statutes to 36 employees in the bargaining unit. In the second election, employees at the U.S. Army’s Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, voted to join AFGE, extending representation to 163 non-appropriated fund (NAF) employees at the resort who serve in various hospitality jobs.
A few months later, Inter-American Foundation (IAF) employees overwhelmingly voted to join AFGE as they seek to have a voice in the workplace. The election took place on Sept. 11, and 33 employees out of 34 eligible voters voted to form a union under AFGE. The employees joined AFGE Local 2211, which represents employees at several federal agencies in Washington, D.C.
The House and Senate passed the Social Security Fairness Act to repeal the controversial Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). The bill, H.R. 82, was co-sponsored by Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Garrett Graves, R-La., who filed a discharge petition to force a floor vote on the bill. AFGE went all out for the bill, which has been sent to Biden for his signature.
The bill has provisions which are beneficial to AFGE DoD members, such as increasing military leave for federal employees from 15 days to 20 days, requiring the Defense Department to modernize child care compensation and staffing models that should increase wages for DoD child care workers, and create a temporary program to allow DoD civilian employees working overseas to extend their five-year limit of overseas employment for an additional five-years.
President Donald J. Trump spent his first day in office issuing a slew of executive orders directly targeting federal workers.
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AFGE, Public Citizen, and State Democracy Defenders Fund (SDDF) filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for violating a law requiring that an advisory committee such as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) be fairly balanced in its membership and points of view.
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A new bill has been introduced in the House and Senate to give federal employees a 4.3% raise next year as a way to close the pay gap between the federal and private sectors.
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