A work-from-home, union forest service worker… what a time to be alive.
My office for the past 28.5 years has been my house. I work in the woods just about every day, usually gone from my duty station for 5-8 day stretches, and occasionally up to 16-18 days. My work territory is 10 states, I've completed work at somewhere around 3000 remote work locations in 9/10 of those states.
I'm actually in my physical office 1 or 2 days every 2 weeks, at most. Some times maybe one day a month.
It makes about zero sense for me to have a designated office space at a FS facility. I'm considered a hosted employee and have no direct report at the FS office here. My immediate supervisor lives in another State 6-7 hours away. I essentially plug up an office space that could be used by an employee that actually needs it.
As to Union work, thats also negotiated in our MA. As a Union President and FSC legislative co-chairman I can spend 1200ish hours a year doing Union work.
There have been years when I have claimed maybe 20-30 hours a year. Mainly because I have a great working relationship with our Management, meet with leadership on a regular basis and we solve issues at the lowest level. I donate wayyy more hours than I've claimed. I have donated more work hours than I've ever claimed official Union time.
The past 2 years have been a different story due to illegal/punitive and ridiculous actions that have required I spend more time doing Union representational work. Things like violations of our master agreement, reorganization, office assignments, TOS issues, yada yada. I brought NONE of this on, but have to deal with it.
My exec board for my local are the model employees...I expect no less from them. They all are highly decorated employees that bust their asses for public lands. None of them do it for the money, they all are talented and educated enough to make significantly more money elsewhere. I often wonder why in the actual fugg we do it. Hasn't been too worth it for 3 of my coworkers, one that was killed and 2 others badly injured in a plane crash flying into a remote airstrip. The 2 survivors had a great time hiking out to a highway, one with severe burns and a broken back.
So, your snarky/snide comment is as childish as it is offensive.
I doubt you could hack doing the job we do for 30-40+ years like a lot of us have. I'm proud of all of them, our job is demanding, physically challenging, and requires extensive and broad skills. Not very many make the cut...rare birds.
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