This bill requires heads of federal agencies to charge labor organizations that are recognized as exclusive representatives for the agency’s employees for the agency resources and employee time they use. The fee is intended to monetize what the bill treats as a taxpayer subsidy for union activity performed while employees are on duty.
The policy changes put new costs and administrative duties on unions and agency human-resources and budget offices, and creates a stepped enforcement regime that can strip a union’s exclusive-recognition status if fees go unpaid. For compliance officers and agency managers, the bill replaces much of the existing back-and-forth about official time accounting with statutory billing, interest-based penalties, strict time-tracking rules, and limited review rights for unions and employees.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill establishes a new Section 7136 in Title 5 requiring agencies to bill recognized labor organizations each calendar quarter for two items: the value of union time used by agency employees and the value of agency resources provided for union use. Agency heads must transfer collected fees to the Treasury general fund.
Who It Affects
Recognized federal labor organizations (including those under TSA rules), agency heads and their human-resources/time-and-attendance systems, labor representatives who use official time, agency inspectors general, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) where decertification occurs.
Why It Matters
It converts official time and in-kind agency support into a line-item cost with statutory enforcement tools—shifting negotiation over scope and valuation into administrative billing and potentially removing grievance and unfair-labor-practice routes for many disputes.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill adds a new statutory section directing each agency head to issue a quarterly invoice to any labor organization that serves as the exclusive representative for agency employees. The invoice must reflect two categories: the cumulative ‘‘union time’’ used by agency employees who serve as labor representatives during the quarter and the value of agency property or services provided for union business (office space, parking, equipment, reimbursements, etc.).
The statute defines ‘‘hourly rate of pay’’ as the agency’s total cost of employing the worker (wages, benefits, payroll taxes, leave accruals, and other benefits) divided by hours worked; that figure multiplied by recorded union hours produces the labor-time line item.
Agencies must determine the value of non-labor resources using GSA rates where applicable or market rates where GSA does not apply, and they must exclude the portion of any resource that was used for agency business. Notices of fees must be sent within 30 days after the quarter ends; payment is due within 60 days of that notice, and agencies must transfer receipts to the Treasury general fund.
The statute forbids agency heads from forgiving, waiving, or reducing the fees once assessed.If a labor organization misses a payment, the bill layers escalating consequences. Unpaid amounts accrue interest using a statutory ‘‘interest rate’’ defined as the 30-year Treasury yield plus one percentage point.
Ninety days after a delinquency begins, agencies must stop granting further union time and deny further use of agency resources for union business, and those denials are insulated from grievance procedures and unfair-labor-practice claims. At 180 days agencies must terminate allotments made under section 7115; at 380 days the FLRA (the ‘‘Authority’’) is to terminate the union’s certification as exclusive representative.
The union cannot be recertified unless it pays all outstanding fees and interest.To generate the underlying billing data, every agency must track union time in its official time-and-attendance system; employees who use union time but fail to record it are treated as absent without leave and subject to adverse action. The bill limits procedural review of certain agency determinations: valuation determinations by the agency head are not subject to collective bargaining, grievance procedures, unfair-labor-practice challenges, or appeals, and adverse actions for failure to record time are sustained on appeal if supported by substantial evidence.
Finally, agency inspectors general must audit compliance every two years and report findings to the agency head and the congressional oversight committees named in the statute.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Agencies must issue a fee notice to each recognized labor organization within 30 days after each calendar quarter; payment is due within 60 days of that notice.
The fee equals (a) the product of each labor representative’s hourly rate of pay (total agency labor cost divided by hours worked) and the number of recorded union hours that quarter, plus (b) the value of agency resources used by the union based on GSA rates or market rates.
If a fee goes unpaid, interest accrues at a rate equal to the average market yield on 30‑year Treasury securities plus one percentage point.
Enforcement is stepped: at 90 days agencies must deny further union time and resources; at 180 days agencies must terminate allotments under 7115; at 380 days the FLRA must terminate the union’s certification as exclusive representative unless back payments (plus interest) are made.
The bill bars review: agency heads’ valuation determinations are not subject to unfair-labor-practice complaints, collective-bargaining grievance procedures, or appeals, and agency heads may not forgive, waive, or reduce assessed fees.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Designates the measure as the "Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallets Act of 2025." This is purely a caption and has no operative effect on rights or obligations.
Quarterly fee requirement and payment flow
Creates the core billing obligation: agency heads must charge recognized labor organizations quarterly for (1) the value of union time used by labor representatives while on duty and (2) the value of agency resources provided for union use. It sets a 30‑day window to send notices after each quarter and a 60‑day payment window, and requires collected fees to be transferred to the Treasury general fund rather than retained by the agency. It also contains an express prohibition on forgiveness, reimbursement, waiver, or reduction of assessed fees by the agency head.
Valuation rules and limits on contestability
Prescribes how agencies calculate the two components of the fee. For labor time, agencies use a total-cost hourly rate (salary plus benefits, payroll taxes, paid-leave accruals, and other employer costs) multiplied by recorded union hours. For non‑labor resources, agencies use GSA established rates where applicable or market rates otherwise, and they must prorate shared resources to include only the portion used for union business. Crucially, the statute states that such agency determinations are not to be treated as unfair labor practices, not subject to collective bargaining or grievance procedures under chapter 71, and not contestable or appealable—insulating valuation and fee-setting from standard labor-relations review channels.
Enforcement, penalties, time frames, and adverse‑action rules
Lays out the enforcement ladder and related procedural changes. Unpaid fees accrue interest at a statutorily defined rate tied to long-term Treasury yields. Ninety days after a delinquency the agency must deny further union time and use of resources and such denials are excluded from grievance and unfair-labor-practice mechanisms; 180 days triggers termination of allotments under section 7115; 365 days triggers notice to the FLRA and the union; 380 days requires the FLRA to terminate the union’s exclusive certification. The section also requires agencies to track union time through official time-and-attendance systems, treats failure to record union time as absence without leave subject to adverse action, and narrows reviewability of those adverse actions by requiring appeals to be sustained if supported by substantial evidence.
Definitions and technical terms
Provides definitions that control implementation: 'union time' (official time for union business), 'labor representative' (employee acting for the union), 'agency resources provided for union use' (office space, equipment, reimbursements, etc., excluding agency business use), 'hourly rate of pay' (total agency cost of employment divided by hours worked), and 'interest rate' (30‑year Treasury yield plus one percentage point). These definitions both expand and constrain what counts toward fees and will determine which activities and costs are billable.
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Federal taxpayers — The bill converts implicit subsidies for official time and agency-provided resources into explicit fees that flow to the Treasury general fund, reducing the unpriced benefit that taxpayers implicitly fund.
- Agency leadership and budget officers — The statute supplies a statutory mechanism to quantify and recoup the agency cost of union activities, giving managers clearer leverage to control official time and to translate usage into budgetary entries.
- Congressional oversight committees and agency inspectors general — They receive structured, recurring audits and reports on official time valuation and fee compliance, which produces regular data for oversight and possible policy follow-up.
Who Bears the Cost
- Recognized federal labor organizations — They are directly liable for the quarterly fees, bear interest on delinquencies, and risk loss of exclusive recognition (decertification) if unable or unwilling to pay.
- Employee labor representatives — They face stricter time‑and‑attendance tracking, potential adverse actions for failure to record union time, and new exposure to discipline rather than grievance protection for certain attendance issues.
- Agencies and their HR/payroll offices — Agencies must implement time-tracking, valuation, invoicing, transfers to Treasury, and the layered enforcement steps; that creates administrative workload and likely requires system changes and IG resources.
- Federal Labor Relations Authority and other labor-relations infrastructure — The FLRA will be drawn into mandatory decertification actions and may have to manage a new wave of unit- or representation-related work, while some traditional dispute-resolution pathways are narrowed.
- Represented employees who rely on union representation — If a union is decertified for nonpayment, employees temporarily lose an exclusive representative until a new process is completed, potentially disrupting representation and bargaining continuity.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is a straightforward trade-off: the bill aims to eliminate an unpriced taxpayer subsidy by converting official time and in-kind agency support into billable fees, but doing so by statute and by narrowing review shifts power toward agency management and away from collective-bargaining and grievance processes—reducing procedural protections for unions and employee-representatives while raising practical and legal questions about valuation, fairness, and administrative burden.
The bill resolves the 'who pays' question by statute but leaves several operational and legal fault lines. Valuation requires agencies to convert diverse and sometimes shared resources into dollar amounts using GSA rates or market rates; practical disputes about appropriate market comparators, prorating shared resources, and allocating benefits into the total-cost hourly rate will arise.
Yet the statute strips many of those disputes of standard labor-law review remedies by making valuation determinations non-reviewable under chapter 71 and barring unfair-labor-practice and grievance challenges. That insulation reduces litigation risk for agencies but increases the risk of arbitrary or inconsistent valuations across agencies.
The enforcement ladder gives agencies strong asymmetric leverage (denial of official time, termination of allotments, decertification) to force payment, but those levers interfere directly with representational relationships and with statutory protections elsewhere in chapter 71. Treating failure to record union time as AWOL and narrowing appeal rights may expedite discipline, but it also raises potential due-process and labor-relations concerns, because adverse actions tied to time-recording become harder to contest.
Finally, fees flow to the Treasury general fund rather than to agency budgets, which removes any budgetary incentive for agencies to moderate levies and creates a principal–agent problem: agencies bear the implementation cost but do not retain receipts, which can skew how strictly they apply the program.
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