Empty parking spaces are seen at Union Station after the DC Government issues a stay at home order to help combat the spread of Covid-19 on Wednesday, April 1, 2020. Image: Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Shutterstock
By: FEDweek StaffThe Biden administration has again prodded federal agencies to have more of their employees working onsite and more frequently, telling them it “is a priority of the President” and that agencies should “aggressively execute this shift in September and October.”
“As we look towards the fall, and with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, your agencies will be implementing increases in the amount of in-person work for your team,” says a memo from White House chief of staff Jeff Zients (see related story). “We are returning to in-person work because it is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to deliver better results for the American people.”
The memo follows one issued in April telling agencies to assess their “organizational health and organizational performance in the context of evolving agency work environments.” That memo also set an expectation that the assessments would lead agencies to “substantially increase meaningful in-person work at federal offices, particularly at headquarters and equivalents.”
Since then, several agencies have announced plans—in some cases concentrating only on headquarters or public-facing functions—requiring teleworkers to be onsite more days per pay period as of a certain date. However, in some cases the status of those plans has been left uncertain as unions have pointed out provisions in labor-management contracts setting terms for telework.
The NTEU union said: “Thousands of frontline federal employees successfully performed on telework schedules for many years before the pandemic because agencies have long agreed that flexible scheduling is a viable option that does not hinder performance or services to citizens and creates work-life balance, reduces commuting costs, and helps recruit and retain employees. These contracts, bargained collectively at the agencies where we represent frontline employees, remain in effect. Any changes to those agreements would have to be negotiated with NTEU.”
And the AFGE union cited the “productivity gains and benefits to recruitment and retention realized through expanding remote and telework options beyond pre-pandemic levels” in saying that agencies should “take advantage of the collective bargaining process and labor-management partnerships to design hybrid working arrangements that allow both for meaningful in-person as well as remote and telework options.”
The Zients memo does not mention bargaining, which could take months. However, agencies may be especially attuned to such requirements in the light of a recent settlement between the VA and the AFGE union, following FLRA rulings that the department had violated a contract by failing to bargain before putting in place pro-management disciplinary policies under a 2017 law. The settlement may result in thousands of employees who were fired under those policies being reinstated with back pay of many millions of dollars.
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