A&R welcomes agencies to authorize their employees to travel to and to attend conferences as part of agency travel. Such agency travel must always include the full benefits, payments, reimbursements, and travel time provided for in the A&R contract and paid for by the agency. These business-related travel costs include, but are not limited to, registration fees, lodging, flights, taxis, parking, etc.
Regardless of their intent, agencies are not free to water down any such negotiated rights by reaching any form of understanding between such agencies and unionized employees of such agencies. For example, an agency may not authorize travel with the understanding that an employee may not or should not be entitled to the full benefits of the A&R contract for such travel (e.g., “agency will pay for registration for in person conference, but not hotel and flights”). Nor may an agency authorize payments for a portion of that travel without remaining liable for all such costs.
Ultimately, among other things, collective bargaining helps eliminate the leverage a manager has over an individual subordinate to negotiate downward for a half a loaf outcome. For example, an employer may not similarly strike a deal with an employee that their travel time will be “off the books” compensatory time that, by its nature, is not likely to materialize into a property right as normal compensatory time would over the 100-hour mark. In short, once agencies fund, in whole or in part, business related travel, they have incurred all the related liabilities for such travel. They may not pick and choose which benefits, payments, and reimbursements they wish to make to employees on a case-by-case basis.
A separate question is what an employee may do in relation to such a conference when acting as individual rather than on travel on behalf of the agency. The A&R contract provides various leave times that may assist with such travel (e.g., vacation, personal leave, compensatory time, or professional development leave). Similarly, the A&R contract has secured a professional development fund that may be utilized to help offset employee costs to attend such a conference. An employee traveling exclusively on their own time and exclusively on their own dime, with perhaps the assistance of the professional development fund, would be traveling in their own capacity and not incur any liabilities for the agency.