Another group of federal employees just joined AFGE!
Employees at the Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration (NCA)’s Memorial Products Service (MPS) recently formed their union with AFGE, seeking a voice on the job.
The election took placed Dec. 30, 2024. Of the 28 eligible voters, 14 voted for union representation and none against. The Federal Labor Relations Authority certified the result of the election on Jan. 8.
The workers, who will be represented by AFGE Local 17, had worked for three different service centers across the country. The centers were later disbanded. The VA gave up the office space and made the whole operation fully remote.
The new union members work at three remote processing locations in Illinois, Kansas, and Tennessee. Prior to COVID, their offices were located at the cemeteries, and Local 17 represented the employees in Tennessee and Kansas. After COVID, all of these employees became remote because NCA gave up the office space at the cemeteries, and the agency characterized them as eligible but unrepresented because of their remote status.
District 14 Special Assistant Peter Winch, who organized the election, explained that the employees of two of the Service Centers had been represented previously, but the VA had started claiming that they were now unrepresented due to their being remote.
“Going to election was the cleanest, fastest way to get the question concerning representation resolved,” he added.
The employees are joining the MPS employees assigned to the VA Central Office, who had already been represented by Local 17 as part of the existing AFGE national consolidated bargaining unit.
Local 17 3rd Vice President Megan-Brady Viccellio said the union is happy to welcome the employees back into the AFGE family.
“I was really excited,” said Viccellio. “Local 17 already represents several of these employees, and we’re really heartened that they wanted to come back to the fold.”
Viccellio added that employees have several workplace concerns, such as unfair allocation of overtime, problematic supervisors, and unfair performance evaluation standards.
“I think that they had experience with the protection of the really robust master agreement at VA. It was a 14 to zero vote. That speaks volumes about the value that they see,” she said.