Union continues campaign against career intern program

The National Treasury Employees Union is continuing its long-standing battle against the Federal Career Intern Program by supporting a veteran who claims the program cost him a job with the Social Security Administration.

The union has filed an amicus brief in the Merit Systems Protection Board case Alvern C. Weed v. Social Security Administration, arguing once again that FCIP illegally undermined veterans preference laws. The union claimed SSA improperly denied Weed, a disabled veteran, a chance to apply for claims and service representative positions by turning to FCIP during a second round of hiring.

"The FCIP was designed as a special-focus hiring authority to provide structured, two-year developmental internships," NTEU President Colleen Kelley stated. "Instead, we now find agencies using it as the principal, and in some cases only, means of hiring."

The brief is one of several NTEU attacks on FCIP. The union also filed an amicus brief in Gingery v. Department of Defense and participated in oral arguments in the case, in which an appeals court ultimately ruled in favor of Stephen Gingery, another disabled veteran.

The union also has a suit pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Office of Personnel Management, arguing FCIP is not "necessary" for "conditions of good administration," and therefore is not a valid exception to the competitive hiring process. OPM moved to have the case dismissed on procedural and jurisdictional grounds in 2008.

It is not yet clear whether the Obama administration will support the program. Kelley said in a January interview that during the presidential transition, she recommended rescinding the executive order authorizing FCIP. Members of President Obama's transition team seemed to understand NTEU's concerns, she said.

But the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will require agencies to hire additional employees quickly, and OPM officials have mentioned FCIP as one tool at agencies' disposal.

At issue in Alvern C. Weed v. Social Security Administration was SSA's failure to post a vacancy announcement during its second round of hiring. Weed had applied for the job during the first round by responding to an advertisement on the federal recruiting site USAJobs.gov, and was added to a list of candidates who had preference because of their veteran status. But the supervisor in charge of filling the position ignored that list and instead selected two candidates who responded to a newspaper advertisement.

During a second round of hiring, SSA used the FCIP to fill similar positions, and limited its recruiting to the University of Montana in Missoula rather than posting job announcements publicly. SSA argued that Weed's preference rights were not violated during the second round of hiring because he did not apply for a job during that round.

An MSPB administrative judge sided with SSA in December 2008. But NTEU argued upon appeal that Weed's status as a nonapplicant was not relevant.

"We urge the board to consider general standing principles as well as a significant body of case law that has developed under Title VII [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act] to allow nonapplicants to seek relief from discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices that had the effect of barring them from submitting an application for the position at issue," the union wrote in its filing.