Report: Taxpayers Subsidize Thousands Of Federal Workers Conducting Union Business

The Daily Caller highlights Trey Kovacs’ report on the practice of official time.  

Thousands of federal employees are likely spending 100 percent of their time performing union activities instead of the work they were hired to do, according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Federal employees are allowed to use work hours for collective bargaining, impasse proceedings and additional union-related activity under a practice known as “official time.” CEI, a libertarian think tank, reported that according to the most recent available data, official time cost taxpayers at least $162.5 million during the 2014 fiscal year.

“Official time is an unnecessary subsidy to federal employee unions that serves the interests of unions and their members, not the public,” Travis Kovacs, CEI’s labor policy expert, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday. “The taxpayer does not receive any direct benefit or any discernible consideration in return for the cost of official time.”

Read the full article at The Daily Caller.