Federal Daily - August 28, 2009

Labor Unions Remember Kennedy

Federal labor union leaders this week mourned the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and praised him for a long list of accomplishments that improved the lot of federal employees. “He never wavered in his belief that the work of this country was vital, and he innately understood that frontline federal employees are the key to our nation’s success,” said National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley. National Federation of Federal Employees President William Dougan pointed to Kennedy’s role on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where the senator was instrumental in passing legislation that scaled back the National Security Personnel System. Dougan also praised Kennedy for working in recent years to level the playing field for government workers in public-private competitions—for example, sponsoring an amendment to the 2006 Defense Authorization bill that ensured that civilian employees could compete to hold their jobs. And, as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Kennedy championed an effort to increase the federal minimum wage, a victory Dougan said led to wage increases for thousands of non-appropriated fund federal employees. Other union leaders were equally generous in their praise of the late senator. National Association of Letter Carriers President Fred Rolando lauded Kennedy’s role in winning Hatch Act reforms for federal and postal employees. And International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) President Gregory Junemann said of the senator’s passing: “To those of us in the labor community, Sen. Kennedy has been an icon to working people. He understood that the best social program in America was a job that afforded workers not only a livable wage, but also an assurance that workers were treated with dignity and respect.” To see more, go to: www.nffe.org/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/13907, www.nteu.org/PressKits/PressRelease/PressRelease.aspx?ID=1471, www.nalc.org/news/release/pr082609.htm, and www.ifpte.org/Downloads/Archives/Press%20
Releases/2009/PRsenkennedy.pdf.

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VA Wrongly Tells Vets They Have Fatal Disease

Federal Computer Week—The Department of Veterans Affairs sent electronically generated letters last week that wrongly told as many as 1,200 veterans they have been diagnosed with the fatal Lou Gehrig’s neurological disease, according to Jim Bunker, president of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans services nonprofit group. VA did not comment on the cause of the mistake. Bunker said it happened due to years of misapplication of computer medical coding. Bunker said that for many years, VA applied a medical code to refer to undiagnosed neurological disorders. Several years ago, he said, VA expanded the code category to include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease. Recently, VA determined ALS to be a service-connected disability and generated automatic letters to all veterans whose records included the code for the disease. However, since the coding contained both ALS and undiagnosed neurological disorders, some of those letters were erroneous, Bunker said. To see the rest of this story, go to: http://fcw.com/articles/2009/08/26/va-erroneously-informs-vets-of-fatal-disease-diagnosis.aspx.

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