An agency of the U.S. government, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), was accused today of meddling in its employee election for an employee representative on its pension board. The TVA Retirement System (TVARS) Election Committee formally requested TVA's Inspector General to intervene on behalf of TVA employees to stop the attempt to disqualify an employee candidate "after the employee election was underway, throwing the employee election in chaos."
TVA and the TVA Retiree Association, "neither of which represent employees, are seeking to change employee elections to deny employees their right to re-elect a long time TVARS board member who most employees know has served TVARS members well."
The election committee also asked for funding of independent counsel to review the rule change "passed Ex Post Facto" to "deny both the candidate and the nominating employee’s due process in the TVARS election and should be illegal based on the United States Constitution."
The committee "also recommends the TVA board veto this rule change and correct this bad governance before it takes effect. The committee "notes that until August first, the new election rules are still in a time window where they are subject to veto by the TVA board. TVA is in total control of the veto process."
"The committee notes that the new term limit rule was submitted and passed immediately in the board meeting" after the candidate "submitted a plan to the Board asking for support of an adequate, timely, best practice, GAO recommended, plan for requesting funding of TVARS by TVA which was denied. That motion identified that TVARS board members have specific liability in not proposing adequate funding of the plan. The timing of actions by TVA representatives to the board give the appearance of a TVA effort to resist adequate funding and of a punitive response to a funding plan request in a system which is inadequately funded. This rule appears to create a structural advantage to TVA through a black list for the strongest current and future employee representatives with financial and TVARS experience while maintaining TVA corporate resources in the background at TVA to control, manipulate, and reduce employee benefits."
Candidates are to be officially announced on August 8, with voting to begin August 20.
See the full text of the election committee's request to TVA's Inspector General here.
July 17, 2018 Update: Gay Henson, President of the Engineering Association, asked TVA to veto the "term limit" amendment. See the letter here. Thank you Gay!
TVA and the TVA Retiree Association, "neither of which represent employees, are seeking to change employee elections to deny employees their right to re-elect a long time TVARS board member who most employees know has served TVARS members well."
The election committee also asked for funding of independent counsel to review the rule change "passed Ex Post Facto" to "deny both the candidate and the nominating employee’s due process in the TVARS election and should be illegal based on the United States Constitution."
The committee "also recommends the TVA board veto this rule change and correct this bad governance before it takes effect. The committee "notes that until August first, the new election rules are still in a time window where they are subject to veto by the TVA board. TVA is in total control of the veto process."
"The committee notes that the new term limit rule was submitted and passed immediately in the board meeting" after the candidate "submitted a plan to the Board asking for support of an adequate, timely, best practice, GAO recommended, plan for requesting funding of TVARS by TVA which was denied. That motion identified that TVARS board members have specific liability in not proposing adequate funding of the plan. The timing of actions by TVA representatives to the board give the appearance of a TVA effort to resist adequate funding and of a punitive response to a funding plan request in a system which is inadequately funded. This rule appears to create a structural advantage to TVA through a black list for the strongest current and future employee representatives with financial and TVARS experience while maintaining TVA corporate resources in the background at TVA to control, manipulate, and reduce employee benefits."
Candidates are to be officially announced on August 8, with voting to begin August 20.
See the full text of the election committee's request to TVA's Inspector General here.
July 17, 2018 Update: Gay Henson, President of the Engineering Association, asked TVA to veto the "term limit" amendment. See the letter here. Thank you Gay!
On July 17, 2018 the Engineering Association asked TVA to veto the "term limit" amendment. I added a link to the bottom of the above original post.
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