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During the week of Sept 15th- 19th, our parent union IFPTE arranged several meetings between union members and Democratic and Republican Senators, Representatives, and their staff. Union members from IFPTE locals and AFGE locals from 4 different NASA centers took leave and traveled to Washington, DC to attend these meetings and actively represent members. In total, around 20 NASA union members attended 35 separate meetings. They advocated for funding for NASA science, emphasized the importance of guardrails in next year’s budget to ensure that funds are spent according to the budget, conveyed their observations of the pre-implementation of the President’s Budget Request, and asserted the importance of labor unions despite our collective bargaining rights currently being abrogated. For those who filled out GESTA's Mission Impact Survey and gave permission to share this information with Congress, your input was anonymised and aggregated and passed on to Congressional members. It was well received. Note that none of these meetings are subject to the Hatch Act as this was not partisan political activity and federal workers have the ironclad right to petition Congress. For those who pay union dues, part of your contributions goes towards such advocacy efforts. A big thanks also to Legislative Director Faraz Khan of IFPTE, who worked around the clock during this week to prepare materials and set up these meetings.
If you are interested in participating in similar future legislative advocacy efforts, we are already recruiting for IFPTE and GESTA’s annual Legislative Advocacy Week in February. You can join with other GESTA members in these meetings and we’ll provide an orientation on the process! Please contact us to let us know if you’re interested. Comments are closed.
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