Eddie Eitches has served as President of AFGE Local 476 since December 1999. He is leading his team in creating a strong "partnership" between Management and the Local. Amazingly he has accomplished this with the Bush/Jackson administration, a feat increasingly rare in the Federal government today. Agreements reached with this administration include a student loan repayment program that will double in size ($800,000) in two years, meaningful telecommuting and 6 AM start. Management has agreed to pay the maximum allowable transit subsidy benefits and increased the child care subsidy this year (those making up to$70,000 are eligible).

As President of AFGE Local 476, Eddie is committed to ensuring that HUD bargaining unit employees receive fair and just treatment. He is involved in a pay parity dispute concerning accountants in the Housing; new hires are paid at a GS-13 rate while long term employees with the same duties receive GS-12 salaries. Eddie led the successful fight to win the A-76 competition (contracting out) as to the Financial Reporting Division of the CFO; the work will remain here. He fought a successful lobbying effort to keep the Community Development Block Grant program at HUD and is presently involved in preserving HOPE VI. He stresses to management that excellent treatment of HUD workers enhances the accomplishment of the mission of HUD. In fact, often Eddie proposes reorganization plans which benefit workers that HUD ultimately adopts such as bringing the work of the grants rating and review function previously performed by incompetent contractors back to HUD employees in Healthy Homes.

Eddie came to HUD in 1978 as an attorney where he headed up a unit that focused on increasing Fannie Mae’s purchase of inner city mortgages. Eddie is currently paid as a Senior Trial Attorney for the Office of General Counsel but per the collective bargaining agreement, spends all his time on union work. Prior to coming to HUD, Eddie was employed at the Federal Trade Commission in 1974, where he served as a litigator, an attorney-adviser to a commissioner, and counsel to the FTC's Bureau of Economics. He was also an Assistant Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University where he taught antitrust economics. Eddie graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was Executive Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Law Review. He graduated summa cum laude from Columbia in New York City.

Eddie served as vice chair of the McLean Community Center, which has tax authority. He was President of the DC Phi Beta Kappa Association. He became involved with Africare in the 1970's when that organization was very young, and was president of Africare, DC for fifteen years. Eddie has served as President of AFGE Council 1, which is made up of AFGE Federal locals in the DC area. Recently, he was awarded the NAACP Fairfax County’s Community Service Award.

Eddie is married to Rachel Birtha Eitches and they have four children: Etan, age 22, who attends Columbia Medical School in New York City; Eliana, age 15, a junior at McLean High School; and twins, Naomi and Elyse, age 9, who are entering the sixth grade.