To receive the �fair day�s pay� to which you are entitled under the Fair Labor Standards Act, you must give to your employer in return a �fair day�s work.� And it is your employer�s sole prerogative to determine what work you must perform, when you must perform it by, and how you must perform it. The Court of Claims said it all in 1975: It is appropriate to observe at the outset that the prime duty and foremost obligation of any employee is to exert effort and energy in the accomplishment of assigned tasks. It is not too much to ask to require a person to function in the job he or she was hired to do. Those in the working force certainly have a legitimate interest in seeking to better their working conditions, and to that end an employee has a right to express his dissatisfactions to those in positions of higher authority. But he is assuredly not free to simply drop assigned work in order to protest management policies; nor is an employee permitted to devote all of his labor--at the expense of his normal duties--to convince superiors that his approach to management techniques is more enlightened than theirs. This court has admonished Government employees in the past that they may not refuse to do work merely because of disagreements with management, and that if they fail to perform their duties, they do so at the risk of being insubordinate.    more »

In the midst of flu season, you might be asking yourself just how sick you need to be before your agency must grant you sick leave (provided you have any to use). Do you have to be �sick as a dog,� as the title of the article of this article implies? And if you do, what medical evidence must you give to the agency, upon your return to work, to prove that you had been that sick?   more »