AFGE Local 1539
THE WORKER
Amer. Fed. of Gov’t Employees Local 1539 Black Hills Health
Care System - Hot Springs, S.D
COMPENSATED WORK THERAPY
BENEFIT OR EXPLOITATION?
Many AFGE locals throughout the
country have been raising the issue that
the Compensated Work Therapy (CWT)
programs at VA Medical Centers across
the country are being used as a means to
reduce the workforce by exploiting veter-
ans.
Management tells us that CWT is a
benefit to our veterans that prepare them
for readjusting to the schedules and de-
mands for reentry into competitive jobs.
Many of these veterans have been fight-
ing drug or alcohol addiction for years
and need a transition for getting back into
the job market. This is a noble concept
and we agree in principle.
However, when management starts
using these veterans as a cheap source of
labor to replace full time positions, we
question the motives and the intent of the
CWT program. Most of the positions are
in fields that were once entry level jobs
for veterans; housekeeping and food ser-
vice. Fulltime housekeepers are not being
replaced as they leave federal service. In-
stead, management is filling the positions
with CWT employees who are paid less
than half of the wages of the fulltime em-
ployee and with no benefits, retirement
or insurance.
Continuance in the program must be for therapeutic purposes and no  more sources of drugs and alcohol?
individual is to be retained in the program to meet production needs.   see by relocating the dom?
I have had a service chief tell me that
they could not keep our facility clean if it
was not for CWT employees. I interpret
this to mean that CWTs are being used to
meet production needs as opposed to get-
ting any real therapy from the program.
Management terminated our only
wage grade painter in October 2009. Yet
they kept on the CWT employees who
were in the paint shop. If this is supposed
to be a training program, we fail to see
how the employees would be trained
when there was no qualified painter on
the payroll! The engineering supervisor
would assign them menial touch up jobs
By Patrick Russell, President AFGE Local 1539
around the medical center. Any real
painting jobs were contracted. As of to-
day, our facility still does not have a
painter on the payroll.
EMPLOYEE/CWT CONFLICT
CWT employees are considered as
patients by management. They may
work along side a full time employee.
Or the employee might be training the
CWT. But if there is any conflict be-
tween the individuals, the employee
could be charged with patient abuse;
even if the CWT employee instigated
the incident. Many of our fulltime
housekeepers are veterans and some of
them came through the CWT program
prior to being hired. Should they ex-
change cross words with a CWT em-
ployee, their status as a veteran does
not protect them; they will be charged
with patient abuse.
The agency does not offer classes
on identifying manipulative behavior to
employees tasked with training CWT
employees. Most of the CWT patients
came to the program after undergoing
treatment in drug or alcohol programs.
Some have a long history of manipulat-
ive behavior in getting others to enable
their addictive behavior.
VHA Handbook 1103 Chapter 4m(2)
Nothing is in place to protect the
employee from being set up or victim-
ized by CWT patients. The only protec-
tion an employee would have is to de-
cline training CWT patients because it
is a “therapeutic” program and house-
keepers are not therapists!
It is my belief that management is
violating VHA Handbook 1103 by us-
ing CWT patients to replace fulltime
employees. Veterans are being ex-
ploited and I believe this is wrong.
Give these veterans fulltime jobs, not
minimum wage with no benefits!
May 2011
DOM PROJECT MOVING
FORWARD
Pat Russell, AFGE Local 1539
The design projects for a new domi-
ciliary in Rapid City are still moving
forward. VISN 23 leadership, Black Hills
Health Cares System and VA Central
Office dialog continues.
A location for the new DOM is still
undetermined. The old DOM is being
designated as a historical site and will be
placed on the historical list. The Black
Hills Health Care System will remain
obligated to maintain the building and
grounds.
AFGE has raised several questions
about building, buying or leasing a new
facility in Rapid City but these do not
appear to be of major concern to VA
leadership or political leaders.
 Why would the VA consider ex-
panding services when they con-
stantly tell us we are serving a de-
clining veteran population as WWII
vets are dying?
 Why build, buy or lease a new dom
in Rapid City when the current do-
miciliary can house several hundred
veterans?
 How close would be the nearest
medical care for dom residents?
 How would veterans get to medical
care if needed?
 Why have drug and alcohol pro-
grams located in a city with so many
 What benefits would our veterans
 If there are no jobs available in
Rapid City for the CWT program,
what benefit is it to relocate that
program?
 Do taxpayers know how much they
will be paying for services and re-
sources we already have?
The major winners of a relocation
would be Black Hills managers who
would have less commute time to travel
to alternate duty stations. This entire con-
cept benefits managers more than it does
the veterans or taxpayers. Wages are
frozen and the economy is broke; but we
still have money for a new DOM! Go
figure!!
 WORKING FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md. –
First, I would like to say that my
intention is not to bite the hand that fed
me. It is to get several things straight
and, maybe, get someone’s attention that
can affect some change, if in fact it has-
n’t been done already. I was lucky
enough to enter civil service in 1980, and
able to stay with the old Civil Service
Retirement System, that has provided me
with a generous pension since I retired in
2005.
The first fallacy that most Americans
believe in is that Federal workers work
directly for the American public. They
don’t; they work for the executive that is
the President and his political appointees.
While it is true that career civil servants
are somewhat protected from political
influence, the bottom line is that if you
don’t do what your political appointee
boss tells you to do, you may be fired or
at best put in a “closet”. I have actually
seen people in high positions moved to a
room that at one time had been the stor-
age closet, so this is no urban legend.
Many of us remember that in the
early 2000s, Dick Cheney met with rep-
resentatives of the energy industry, in-
cluding those from Enron, to create the
energy policy for the Bush presidency.
The transcripts of these meetings were
never made public, notwithstanding in-
vestigations by Congress several years
later that asked for them.
Cheney claimed executive privilege
and never released said transcripts. Soon
after that, my Agency was asked to deter-
mine whether the fracturing of under-
ground formations for the production of
methane gas was safe to human health
and the environment. We were told that
the “vice president was very interested”
in the report.
Several of us in the technical staff
that commented negatively on the con-
tent, as well as the configuration of the
“peer review panel,” were only given
token attention, and eventually kept away
from further reviews. As expected, the
report found that the practice didn’t pre-
sent any danger to human health and the
environment.
If you are a technocrat, like I was, it
is very difficult to keep your integrity
Page 2
Washington Times Monday, May 9, 2011 - 21st-Century Pacifist by Mario Salazar
and still be successful. You actually get
pressure to make statements that con-
tradict physics, and if you don’t, you
are not considered a “team player”.
After a few of these episodes, you stop
getting meaningful assignments, and
then you are reproached for not doing
your work. Many of us had to resort to
documenting everything, so that when
one got a bad evaluation, one could
present evidence that the employee
actually did what they were asked to
do, and that they weren’t given work
commensurate with that person's aca-
demic training and experience.
While you protect yourself by being
forced to do these actions, you, obvi-
ously have to say goodbye to being
promoted until you get a different boss,
and a chance to prove yourself all over
again.
With this obvious waste of talent,
supervisors developed a number of
strategies. The most widely used one is
to replace actual employees (Permanent
Full Time Equivalents, PFTE’s), with
contractors. Some agencies actually
have more contract PFTE’s than em-
ployees. A contractor that wants to be
retained knows that they have to do
what the contracting office asks them
to do.
In other words, they will have to
come up with the politically acceptable
answer, even if it doesn’t quite adhere to
reality. They have to work a very fine
line between actual truth and political
truth. Contractors are put in the position
of sacrificing their integrity to retain the
client.
This brings me to the process for con-
tractors to get in this arguably enviable
position. The Federal Government has
the well known “Request for Pro-
posal” (RFP), process. It is supposed to
guarantee that the best qualified company
gets awarded the contract. There are all
types of safeguards, confidential proc-
esses, and reviews, all to guarantee fair-
ness.
One of these is a “Technical Review
Board” for technical contracts. This
board is formed with members of the
technical team that would benefit and
control the work to be done by the con-
tractor. The review board members are
supposed to act fairly and keep all deci-
sions confidential, including information
from their boss. In actuality, this is nearly
impossible.
I participated in four review boards
for multimillion dollar contracts while I
was in the Federal Government. Each
time, I was told who the usually-
preferred contractor was, and encouraged
to work with established performers. In
two of the cases, the contractor that won
(Continued on page 4) Working Fed
THE WORKER
 THE 1886 HAYMARKET SQUARE RIOT IN CHICAGO
Anarchist Bombing at a Union Meeting Provoked a Deady Riot
The Haymarket Riot in Chicago in
May 1886 killed several people, and
resulted in a highly controversial trial
followed by executions of four men who
may have been innocent. The Ameri-
can labor movement was dealt a se-
vere setback, and the chaotic events
resonated for many years.
American Labor on the Rise
American workers had begun orga-
nizing into unions following the Civil
War, and by the 1880s many thou-
sands were organized into unions,
most notably the Knights of Labor1.
In the spring of 1886 workers struck
at the McCormick Harvesting Machine
Company in Chicago, the factory that
made farm equipment including the
famous McCormick Reaper. The work-
ers on strike demanded an eight-hour
workday, at a time when 60-hour work
weeks were common. The company
locked out the workers and hired strike-
breakers, a common practice at the
time.
On May 1, 1886, a large May Day
parade was held in Chicago, and two
days later, a protest outside the McCor-
mick plant resulted in a person being
killed.
Protest Against Police
Brutality
A mass meeting was called to take
place on May 4, to protest what was
seen as brutality by the police. The
location for the meeting was to be Hay-
market Square in Chicago, an open
area used for public markets.
At the May 4th meeting a number of
radical and anarchist speakers ad-
dressed a crowd of approximately
1,500 people. The meeting was peace-
ful, but the mood became confronta-
tional when the police tried to disperse
the crowd.
The Haymarket Bombing
As scuffles broke out, a powerful
bomb was thrown. Witnesses later de-
scribed the bomb, which was trailing
smoke, sailing above the crowd in a
high trajectory. The bomb landed and
exploded, unleashing shrapnel.
The police drew their weapons and
fired into the panicking crowd. Accord-
ing to newspaper accounts, policemen
fired their revolvers for a full two min-
utes.
Seven policemen were killed, and
it’s likely that most of them died from
police bullets fired in the chaos, not
from the bomb itself. Four civilians
were also killed. More than 100 per-
sons were injured.
Labor Unionists and Anar-
chists Blamed
Public outcry was enormous.
Press coverage contributed to a
mood of hysteria. Two weeks later,
the cover of Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Magazine, one of the most popular
publications in the US, featured an
illustration of the "bomb thrown by
anarchists" cutting down police and a
drawing of a priest giving the last rites
to a wounded officer in a nearby po-
lice station.
The rioting was blamed on the
labor movement, specifically on the
Knights of Labor, the largest labor
Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Forest  using it to discredit unions by linking
Home Cemetery   them to radicals and violent anarchists.
union in the United States at the time.
Widely discredited, fairly or not, the
Knights of Labor never recovered.
Newspapers throughout the US
denounced “anarchists,” and advo-
cated hanging those responsible for
the Haymarket Riot. A number of ar-
rests were made, and charges were
brought against eight men.
By Robert McNamara, About.com Guide
Trial and Executions of the
Anarchists
The trial of the anarchists in Chi-
cago was a spectacle. The prosecutors
introduced evidence now known to be
fabricated. And while it wasn’t proven
that any of the defendants had made or
thrown the bomb, all eight were con-
victed of inciting the riot. Seven of them
were sentenced to death.
One of the condemned men killed
himself in prison, and four others were
hanged on November 11, 1887. Two of
the men had their death sentences
commuted to life in prison by the gover-
nor of Illinois.
The Haymarket Case is
Reviewed
In 1892 the governorship of Illinois
was won by John Peter Altgeld, who
ran on a reform ticket. The new gover-
nor was petitioned by labor leaders and
defense attorney Clarence Darrow to
grant clemency to the three imprisoned
men convicted in the Haymarket case.
Critics of the convictions noted the bias
of the judge and jury and the public
hysteria following the Haymarket Riot.
Governor Altgeld granted the clem-
ency, stating that their trial had been
unfair and was a miscarriage of justice.
Altgeld’s reasoning was sound, but it
no doubt damaged his own political
career, as conservative voices branded
him a “friend of anarchists.”
Haymarket Riot a Setback
for American Labor
It was never officially determined
who threw the bomb in Haymarket
Square, but that didn't matter at the
time. Critics of the American labor
movement pounced on the incident,
The Haymarket Riot resonated in
American life for years, and there is no
doubt it set back the labor movement.
The Knights of Labor had its influence
plummet, and its membership dwin-
dled.
At the end of 1886, at the height of
the public hysteria following the Hay-
market Riot, a new labor organization,
the American Federation of Labor was
formed. And the A.F.L. eventually rose
to the forefront of the American labor
movement.
THE WORKER Page 3

AFGE Local 1539
(Continued from page 2) Working Fed
the award was not the one that presented
the best proposal, in my opinion. In one
case, our boss appeared to be influenced
by the charms of a person of the opposite
sex that was one of the principals in the
winning contracting firm. That person
left to get a Ph. D. soon after the firm got
the contract.
Another significant factor is that in
most cases, the firm that has held a con-
tract tends to be the person getting the
renewal. While there is a natural advan-
tage in being familiar with the work and
the management staff, it is not always the
best choice for the job. It is common in
the Federal Government that once a firm
gets a contract with a Department or an
Agency, that they would keep the con-
tract indefinitely, becoming almost like
part of that Department or Agency. It’s a
dilemma with some justification, but how
to safeguard against its becoming unfair
and undeserved?
Employment in the Federal Govern-
ment is supposed to be competitive.
While there are groups that get preferen-
tial treatment, including veterans of the
Armed forces, in general, the applicants
are supposed to be evaluated according
to knowledge and experience. For some
years, affirmative action has been a
“buzz phrase” that led to the increase of
minorities and women in the Federal
Government.
Managers are encouraged to hire
women and minorities, getting kudos if
they do so, but there is no requirement,
per se, to do so.
As a Hispanic, but male, professional,
I felt that recruiting more females should
be separated from recruiting more mi-
norities. (Especially after the Federal
Government obtained gender equity in
the 1990s – speaking of numbers of posi-
tions, not pay). I remember one of my
bosses kidding about hiring a Hispanic
female and saying that she counted for
two. This is why I felt the affirmative
action targets needed to be separated.
Giving special treatment to veterans
was always controversial during my stint
in the government. Many managers re-
sented that they had to either hire or
sometimes disqualify a veteran during a
job search. I always remember that, dur-
Page 4
PO Box 1029
Hot Springs, SD 57747
Federal Employees - Our Best Homeland Security
Phone: 605-745-2080
Fax: 605-745-2818 AFGE Local 1539 Officers
President..........…......................Patrick Russell
The next regular Vice Pres........................................Cliff Schunot
monthly Union meeting Secretary.................…............Gail Archambeau
Treasurer ....................…......... Rebecca Willse
will be held on
Chief Shop Steward.........…...…....Dan Harley
May 26, 2011 at
4:30 PM in Bldg 12 Sgt. at Arms............................... VACANT
Safety Officer..........….............VACANT
Rm 222B Union Office
Women’s Coordinator ....…..VACANT
Fair Prac. Coordinator .......…….......VACANT
ing a training, one of my colleagues AFGE Local 1539 Stewards
asked the lecturer how to disqualify Robert Goldberg Bob Goldberg
a veteran when making a decision
for a new hire. I was so incensed,
for an industry group association that
as a veteran, that I responded by indi-
lobbied the legislature and was regulated
cating that she was trying to break the
by my Agency. This boss, during his/her
law. She never assumed that a veteran
tenure was responsible for and actually
would be one of her colleagues in a
implemented regulations that affected the
professional work force.
particular industry group in which his/her
However, the episode that has to
spouse worked. During the regulatory
"take the cake" is a hiring practice I
process, the industry group was actually
became aware of in the last decade I
consulted, and in many cases, suggested
worked. My office was given addi-
wording for the regulations. Many in the
tional positions, and the managers
office felt that this was not proper, but
came up with a fairly innovative (and
apparently the Office of General Counsel
likely illegal) way to make sure the
for the Agency cleared it.
new hires were what they wanted. Dur-
Not biting the hand that feeds me, but
ing the time after they decided what
how it works needs to be examined.
positions would have to be filled, but
before an official job announcement Mario  Salazar,  the  21st  Century 
was published, the hiring official asked Pacifist,  is  a  bleeding  heart  liberal, 
a contractor to put an advertisement in agnostic,  exercise  fanatic,  Redskin 
professional magazines. This ad was fan,  technophile,  combat  infantry 
rather cryptic and just stated the type of veteran,  jewelry  maker,  amateur 
work or profession and the range of
computer  programmer,  Environ‐
salary, ostensibly to put out feelers for
qualified candidates as a prescreening mental  engineer,  Colombian‐born, 
process. After applicants responded to free  thinker  and  not  surprisingly, 
the ad, they were screened for specific pacifist.  You  can  find  his  articles  ‐ 
job criteria, and only then, and only the ranging  from  politics  to  cooking  a 
top candidates, were informed that the mean  brisket  ‐  in  21st  Century  Paci‐
jobs were for a Federal Agency.
fist  at  The  Washington  Times  Com‐
During this process, they were es-
sentially coached on how to respond to munities. 
the job announcements, in a way to
guarantee to be one of the top candi-
dates for the job. How did I find out
about this pre-hiring process? This was
told to me in confidence by a person
that got hired this way.
We all have read of the revolving
door between regulators and the regu-
lated community. What is not talked
about a lot is how persons working in
the Federal Government could have a
conflict of interest with the community
that they regulate. One of my bosses
was married to a scientist that worked
THE WORKER