Nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs are calling on leadership to hire more frontline health care workers, and protesting nationwide staffing shortages that they say make it harder to treat veterans.

VA nurses represented by National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) and National Nurses United (NNU) rallied outside the VA’s headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

NNOC/NNU are calling on the VA to lift “what is, in effect, a hiring freeze,” that has led to 66,000 vacancies across the VA health care system. More than 13,000 of those vacancies are nursing positions.

The Veterans Health Administration hired 61,000 employees last year, its fastest rate of growth in 15 years, and saw its total workforce peak at more than 400,000 employees — its highest-ever headcount.

But the VA has scaled back its health care hiring goals this year, and is planning to cut its workforce by 10,000 positions, under its fiscal 2025 budget proposal. Most of the job cuts would come from VHA.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters the department expects to manage this reduction through attrition.

VA leaders have repeatedly said VHA isn’t going through a hiring freeze, and that it continues to hire for frontline medical positions — just at a less aggressive pace than it did last year. because of higher employee retention rates.

NNU Vice President and Veterans Affairs Chairwoman Irma Westmoreland, a registered nurse at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, said VA nurses are spread thin by unfilled positions, leading to burnout and “moral distress.”

“We feel the lack of these nurses in our faculties every day — every single day,” Westmoreland said in an interview. “We feel that we are chronically understaffed in nursing, and that is erodes the patient care that we’re able to provide for our veterans. And this hiring freeze cuts services to veterans.”

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement that “there is no nationwide hiring freeze on VA nurses,” and that over the past three years, the VA increased its nursing workforce by 14,000 positions.

Hayes said the VA currently employs 122,000 total nurses — the largest nursing workforce in the country and in the history of VA. VA’s nursing workforce, he added, has a turnover rate of 3.4%, and is “far outperforming” the private sector.

The VA, he said, has increased staffing by more than 3% so far in fiscal 2024.

“There is no shortage of VA staff. After a record year of hiring in 2023, VA currently has the largest health care workforce in our history — and we are retaining those great employees at all-time record rates,” Hayes said.

Jordan Le Blanc, an ICU nurse at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado, said VA’s “gold standard” for care is to have an ICU nurse assigned to care for one or two critically ill patients.

Since December 2020, however, Le Blanc said ICU nurses in his facility have been following a “crisis nursing” staffing model, and are assigned three patients.

“It has already diminished the quantity of the services that we can provide, and it really at the individual level of each interaction that I have with veterans,” LeBlanc said, speaking in his capacity as an NNU member. “It poses a risk that diminishes the VA mission and the way that we should be honoring these individuals for the service that they provided to our country.”

Le Blanc said his VA medical center will, at times, assign nurses to cover the ICU, but who don’t have ICU specialty training.

“They do not know how to manage mechanical ventilators or medications that augment blood pressure that are infused continuously. And so, that ultimately means that the quality of care — really the dignity of care, at the simplest level — is impacted in a negative way,” he said.

A VA inspector general report in August 2023 found 93% of VA medical facilities reported a severe staffing shortage of practical nurses.

McDonough told reporters in April that VA’s nurse-to-patient ratios are not “perfect in every facility,” but said nurses are generally spread thinner in private health care facilities.

“The stress that comes with an individual nurse covering multiple beds in an ICU, for example, in a community, is not matched to the VA system, where our patient ratios suggest that it’s a much different experience,” McDonough said.

Chief Financial Officer Jon Rychalski told reporters in March that the MISSION Act, COVID-19 pandemic and the toxic-exposure PACT Act have all led to record growth in community care year-over-year.

“They’ve put us on a path where we cannot sustain the rapid growth and community care in addition to the fixed costs that support our massive direct care system,” Rychalski said.

Westmoreland said that if VA continues to see rising community care costs, “it threatens to erode the VA’s direct care system, which could lead to elimination of services and leave veterans without the option of care.”

“The VA is a place where veterans heal together in their community, they find camaraderie with others and in specialized experience and, and they miss that when they’re not in the VA,” she said.

“We’re now looking at what is it that we need to do, what services can we cut? Where can we look to see what we need to do, to make to make sure we have enough money to pay that bill, instead of going back and saying we need money to care for our patients,” she added.

Le Blanc said the Rocky Mountain Regional VAMC recently decreased the capacity of its ICU from 18 beds to 12 beds, and that its spinal cord unit shrank from 28-bed unit down to 15 beds.

“They definitely have been open with us that there are budgetary deficits, both within our facility and within VA nationally. A large component of that is in relation to community care,” he said.

Following interdisciplinary meetings between frontline staff and facility leaders, the chief nurse and facility director for the Rocky Mountain Regional VAMC  determined last December that the facility needed 57 additional nurses this year. However, Le Blanc says the VAMC never filled those positions.

“They approved those positions in December, and then no positions were ever posted or have been hired for,” he said.

Le Blanc said current funding levels at the Rocky Mountain Regional VAMC only supports about 85% of filled ICU beds, and that current staffing levels can’t accommodate that level of care.

“We have not enough employees to meet 85% of filled ICU beds at the medical standard of patient ratios, in terms of nurses,” he said.

Le Blanc said the VAMC’s interim director, in an April meeting, likened the VA’s budget problems to balancing a checkbook.

“When you’ve got to balance a personal checkbook, you don’t always bet what you want, ” he said in summary of the discussion. “But the reality is,  the care of our veterans and safe staffing, and this right to excellent health care, it isn’t a joking matter … We trust these leaders to make responsible decisions, and to set up sustainable practices. And that’s really what we need here.”

VHA in recent memos, put a temporary pause on medical facilities retracting tentative and final job offers to candidates, then told leadership and HR officials to only rescind job offers as an “action of last resort.”

VA says they’re not in a hiring freeze, but we see the job offers being rescinded, and vacancies that were scheduled to be filled are not even being filled,” Westmoreland said.

LeBlanc said the Rocky Mountain VAMC gave tentative job offers to two candidates, but “it’s basically stopped there.”

“They’re awaiting what we would call their formal job offer, with their entry on duty,” he said.

Westmoreland said VA health care job applicants are frustrated by delays and rescinded job offers.

“If somebody waited to get into the VA, did all the things they had to do and waited, and had a tentative job offer, and then all those job offers were rescinded, because we’re freezing. Do you know what those people did? They said, ‘Forget the VA, I’m going to go work somewhere else.‘ And now we got to start over if you want to hire, recruit them. And so now our time to hire is going to be even longer,” she said.

Westmoreland said VHA’s average time to fill in some facilities is as high at 168 days. VHA, she added, is trying to get that down to 120 days, but warned that’s still to long for qualified candidates to wait.

“That’s still three months …. in the private sector, people can go to a private sector hospital interview for a job and be working in two weeks,” she said.

The post VA touts its largest nursing workforce, but union says they’re ‘chronically understaffed’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

Leaders at the Defense Logistics Agency say they are still assessing the effects of an aggressive return-to-office policy that’s led to widespread employee dissatisfaction and two formal allegations of unfair labor practices, but that so far, the policy does not appear to have had a serious negative impact on recruiting and retention.

DLA’s new policy is one of the most prescriptive in the federal government, but officials say it’s necessary as part of a broader effort to “transform” the agency for great power competition. The changes took effect in January, requiring all employees to be in the office at least three days each week.

The three-day in-office minimum isn’t unheard of among federal agencies. What’s unusual is that individual supervisors and employees have no say over which days those are. All 18,000 of the agency’s telework-eligible staff are required to report to their offices on the exact same days: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week. The across-the-board rule is significantly more restrictive and burdensome than even the polices that were in place before COVID, several DLA employees and union leaders told Federal News Network.

“I know for many, it’s not the most popular change that we’ve made over the past several years,” Brad Bunn, DLA’s vice director told a worldwide town hall presentation last month. “But given the requirements that we’re facing, and the urgency and speed at which we need to make these changes, the agency made that shift and standardized when folks are together. We already are challenged with a very geographically dispersed workforce and how our headquarters elements are dispersed throughout the agency. We wanted to have a process where we could bring folks back and have the environment where we could bring changes and use that collaboration and integration to drive solutions.”

DLA is an outlier, employees say

As part of a return-to-office survey Federal News Network conducted in April, which garnered thousands of responses from federal employees, responses from DLA staff stood out: Employees told us the rigidity of the policy has created unusual financial and logistical difficulties for employeess and made the agency overall a less attractive place to work.

“The strict DLA telework policy does not take into consideration any workplace or position-specific elements, including but not limited to: position description, if the employee is customer facing or not, where the employee’s colleagues or customers are located … and a supervisor’s ability to supervise their own employee rather than enforcing a one size fits all policy,” one survey respondent said. “Both my spouse and I work for DLA, therefore the RTO mandate negatively impacts our work-life balance and has created a family hardship.”

“DLA has mandated we are in the office six days a pay period. On the same installation, DFAS only has to be in the office four days a period, how would that make you feel?” asked another. Another added that “DLA is losing its most talented people in mass quantities. The people who remain have unmanageable workloads.”

Several also told us that they’re finding themselves less productive when they’re in the office than when they’re working remotely, and that challenges with insufficient parking, IT outages, and finding lunch options now that many cafeterias have closed or are overcrowded in the middle of the week are all common problems.

“I spend 50% of my day on teleconferences with customers not located in my office. The rest I spend writing contracts, emails to customers, statements of work, negotiation memorandums, and enjoy not having the distractions of the office,” another respondent wrote. “I need quiet to concentrate and write formal documents. An open-air office does not offer this environment.”

Collective problems require ‘presence,’ leaders say

Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, who took over as the agency’s director in February, acknowledged there may be some truth to the productivity arguments — on an individual basis. But right now, he said, DLA is hyper-focused on problems that cross organizational and functional boundaries, making in-person collaboration essential.

“We are improving our ability to tackle and solve collective problems by physical presence in the workplace,” he told attendees at the town hall. “Part of the purpose is team building and innovation that is just very difficult to conjure in a virtual setting. I just know from my own personal experience that I run my best wind sprints when I’m with a group. And I think we can achieve our best results when we can encourage each other — we can problem solve, we can innovate when we are standing shoulder-to-shoulder. In many cases, we can be individually more productive [in remote settings]. But I don’t know if we can be as productive as a team when we operate in isolation and separately.”

DLA officials said they’re open to making changes to the new telework policy, and that they’re carefully watching workforce data and gathering employee feedback. So far, Bunn said, there aren’t any metrics that show clear declines in hiring or retention: The number of people applying for DLA positions is down about 5% compared to last year, but retention is up over the same period.

“My initial assessment is I think it’s having the intended effect,” he said “I’m seeing more collaboration happening in real time. I’m seeing shorter lead times to solutions. We’re starting to see that traction, but nothing is set in stone. We will continue to assess our whole [telework] posture over the next year or so, and then we will work with our our policy experts and employee representatives to determine what the best approach is going forward into the future.”

However, union representatives and multiple employees alleged DLA has declined to share specific statistics on hiring and retention since the implementation of the new, much more rigid telework policy. Anecdotally, several survey respondents told us it’s clear that hiring has slowed and that people are leaving at a faster clip than they otherwise would.

“If DLA returned to the telework policy that was in place prior to COVID, I think most people would be fine,” one said. “DLA used to be the agency to work for. Now we are all overworked and under appreciated due to everyone jumping ship,” wrote another.

DLA’s transformation objectives

As far as the big, transformational, organizational changes DLA is trying to achieve, Simerly said they’re largely about putting the agency on a combat footing, and getting DLA to think about how to operate in an era of great power competition, in much the way the military services are.

“When we think about logistics and the way it’s delivered from port to fort, or from factory to foxhole, it’s significantly different than it ever has been. We call that contested logistics,” he said. “We need to understand that logistics is vulnerable; that’s why our enemies will target our logistics capabilities … if anything can be seen on the future battlefield, it will be targeted, and if it can be targeted, it will be destroyed. Those are some of the challenges and changes that have taken place across the world that we have to respond to.”

As one example of near-term changes Simerly wants to make to help prepare for that contested logistics future: DLA personnel need to be regularly participating in the exercises the military services are already conducting to prepare for possible conflict with China.

“As they learn about operating in a contested logistics environment, we have to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them, learning those lessons at the same time and incorporating them back here. We can’t wait for it to come out in the lessons learned compendium one or two years later,” he said. “We have traditionally had people that we’ve been committing to those things over the years. In some cases, we send those people to those things to observe. That’s got to change, we have to send people to participate. And that might mean we have to send different people with different skill sets in order to gain the insights that we need.”

Bunn said at the same time, DLA is making big changes to the business side of its operations that, he argues, also require more physical presence.

For example: the implementation of a new warehouse management system, and changing business processes to hopefully pass a financial audit by 2028.

“The audit is a high-risk proposition, given how many notices of findings and recommendations we have,” he said. “And every one of those corrective action plans is trying to address a pretty gnarly challenge: digital business transformation. That’s recapitalizing our IT infrastructure, our business systems that we’ve relied on for many decades. We are making a ton of changes in a short, compressed period of time, and it requires us to rethink how we do business. That’s not just a [CIO] thing — it’s the business and technology enablers coming together across multiple functions to make those things happen.”

Employees say DLA still hasn’t explained ‘why’

However, many employees told us that agency leaders have not clearly articulated why a future of contested logistics and business transformation requires tens of thousands of employees — across dozens of global locations — to be in their respective offices on the exact same days.

And DLA’s largest union, the American Federation of Government Employees, has filed two separate complaints alleging unfair labor practices with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, arguing that the new policy also violates the agency’s contract with AFGE.

Parts of the contract were imposed by a federal impasse board during previous disputes under the Trump Administration. The contract stipulates that employees need to be in the office for 60% of their work hours, but says nothing about which specific days of the week those hours must be.

And throughout 2023, DLA had been operating under a “pilot program,” in agreement with AFGE, that allowed much more telework flexibility. According to the union, the agency abruptly terminated that informal agreement last September and notified AFGE that it would insist on the three-day per week requirement, and interpret the contract in such a way that the agency could choose the days of the week that would add up to 60% in-office.

AFGE’s complaints to the FLRA allege that the agency refused to bargain with the union over the new arrangement, and violated other portions of the contract, including some that were imposed by the prior impasse panel over the union’s objection.

Regardless of what the FLRA decides about the new policy’s legality, there are implications to the inflexible telework policy that are turning out to make it work even worse in practice than how it looks on paper, said Terry Day, the president of AFGE Council 169, which represents the union’s DLA’s employees.

For instance: if Mondays and Fridays are the only permissible telework days across an agency of thousands of workers in many different locations and work functions, it’s guaranteed that the most junior members of the workforce are going to get the short end of the stick — since it’s almost impossible for any individual worksite to have all of its employees teleworking on any one day.

For those younger employees, Day argued, the new policy is effectively a telework prohibition.

“The people with the most tenure, 20-30 years, are going to take up the Mondays and Fridays. It’s a severe disadvantage for the people who have just gotten out of college and are just starting — that’s what they’ve taken away from these employees,” he said. “A lot of those younger people are going to go to jobs where they can telework five days a week. You’re not going to keep people around if they can go to a contractor where they make more money and get better benefits.”

The post Upset at DLA over unusually restrictive telework policy first appeared on Federal News Network.

After negotiating for more than two years, the Environmental Protection Agency has finally ironed out a new collective bargaining agreement with its union, the American Federation of Government Employees.

AFGE Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA employees, unanimously ratified the new contract on May 16. The agreement is now in a final review process with agency leaders. By late June, the changes in the contract will become official for the next four years, replacing an interim labor-management agreement.

The contract locks in a couple new articles for bargaining unit employees, one related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA), and another on scientific integrity. Although the contract is a positive milestone for the labor-management relationship, AFGE said it’s still wary of what the future holds for the agency’s telework policy.

For the time being, the new collective bargaining agreement secures EPA’s current policies on remote work, telework and flexible work schedules. It was one of the earliest articles AFGE and EPA negotiated for the contract. Currently, telework-eligible bargaining unit employees have to work in the office two days per pay period at a minimum.

But Marie Owens Powell, president of AFGE Council 238, said AFGE is already thinking ahead to the possibility of a “mid-term reopening” of the contract in two years. At that time, agency and union officials will have the opportunity to renegotiate some of the agreement’s provisions.

“The agency has made it clear they intend to open remote work and telework, so the fight is far from over,” Powell said in an interview. “We continue to remain open to discussing with the agency the successes of remote work and telework, but what we’re not willing to do is enter into negotiations right now that are not required. That seems to be what the agency would like to do, [but] the midterm negotiations are not required for two years. We will wait until then.”

An EPA spokesperson said the agency is exploring potential changes to its telework and remote policies to achieve the administration’s current goal to increase meaningful in-person work, while still abiding by all collective bargaining agreements.

In the meantime, Powell said AFGE will focus on firming up its position on telework at EPA, and figuring out how it plans to defend the current, relatively flexible policies in place at the agency.

Overall, both EPA and AFGE view the new collective bargaining agreement largely as a success — especially after many long, tense months of negotiations, and after running into several sticking points. The new agreement, among many standard collective bargaining provisions, adds a handful of new articles for the agency.

EPA Press Secretary Remmington Belford said EPA is “pleased” about arriving at the new collective bargaining agreement, particularly for the articles relating to scientific integrity and DEIA.

“These articles clarify EPA’s commitment to a culture of scientific integrity and affirm the importance of integrating DEIA principles across the agency,” Belford said in an email statement.

EPA to launch DEIA pilot to assess hiring practices

Adding a DEIA article to the union contract is new for EPA, and relatively unique for a federal collective bargaining agreement. AFGE’s initial proposal in June 2022 to add the article led to many back-and-forth discussions between agency and union officials. AFGE proposed multiple DEIA initiatives, like installing gender-neutral bathrooms, implementing DEIA training for EPA employees, diversifying hiring panels and much more.

During negotiations, after being unable to initially reach an agreement, EPA and AFGE considered moving a handful of articles to an impasse, including the provision on DEIA. In August 2023, in reaction to the possibility of an impasse, House lawmakers called on both EPA and AFGE to negotiate in good faith, specifically on the DEIA article.

Ultimately, EPA and AFGE used a third-party mediator to reach an agreement on the provision. The final contract article includes DEIA training for employees, as well as plans to launch several pilot projects to assess the presence of implicit bias in the agency’s hiring and promotion processes.

“We’re really excited that we actually have action items, and we’re excited just to have this article for the first time,” Powell said. “The agency is committing to equal and fair treatment of all employees, and no tolerance for any harassment.”

Even seemingly small items in the DEIA contract article, like installing gender-neutral bathrooms, can make a significant difference in advancing DEIA in the workplace. Even so, Powell said those changes may come slowly, and be somewhat limited.

“We do have to realize that there are a lot of big, historic buildings that our folks are occupying. To do any type of new construction in those buildings is next to impossible — we get that,” Powell said. “So, only where space allows, the agency agreed to provide for gender-neutral bathrooms. Even where there weren’t commitments that we could get in the actual article, we are seeing things change. We put the spotlight on it. And I think that in and of itself has been successful.”

Whistleblower protections for employees

In addition to the DEIA article, another new contract provision mirrors EPA’s scientific integrity policy, aiming to firm up a workplace culture that promotes strong scientific and ethical standards.

In any cases where employees suspect a violation of EPA’s integrity policy, the collective bargaining agreement confirms whistleblower protections for any employee who reports an allegation of scientific misconduct at work.

“Because it’s a contract article, if the agency doesn’t act on it, [that would] kick us into our grievance procedure,” Powell said. “And once you go through step one, step two [of the grievance procedure], the final step is an independent arbitrator. So, in those most serious, grave situations, we’re going to have a third party be able to step in and weigh in on the allegations.”

Powell said adding the new “scientific integrity” provision in the contract is specifically important for EPA. Part of the reason AFGE wanted to include that article in the new collective bargaining agreement was to hedge against a future possibility of what she said were previous agency setbacks during the Trump administration.

“This was the opportunity to provide that layer of protection for our staff,” Powell said. “It’s not just the scientists, it’s anyone who is using that data for decision-making. It could be your engineer; it could be your inspector who happens to be an environmental protection specialist. Everyone enjoys the protection under that article.”

After first agreeing to restore collective bargaining, office space and official time back in 2021, AFGE and EPA worked for years to reach the now final, four-year contract. If there is mutual agreement between the two parties, the contract can then continually be extended in one year increments after the initial four years.

Both parties, each in their own way, described the new agreement as a success for the agency’s workforce. For Powell, the tensions during negotiations and the long hours of work to reach the agreement were well worth it.

“If that means we get one more gender-neutral bathroom, or if we get one more employee who feels safe coming to the workplace expressing their gender the way they choose, then that’s a win for us,” Powell said. “[Agency leaders are] not only getting the pressure from the union — they’re hearing it from their own, from within. And I think we’re going to see tremendous change.”

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Leaders at TSA and AFGE signed off on a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) Thursday afternoon, covering some 42,000 transportation security officers working in airports across the country. The agency and labor officials penned the document at a signing ceremony at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York.

The new CBA replaces a previous and relatively limited labor-management agreement between the two parties. It also comes after TSA employees recently received, and later maintained, a substantial pay increase. Prior to those changes, the agency was struggling significantly with staff recruitment and retention.

“If we didn’t have this CBA, if we didn’t have this pay package, I would submit to you, we probably wouldn’t have a TSA in five or 10 years,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said at Thursday’s signing ceremony. “That’s how important it is.”

The pay raises, which in some cases resulted in 31% salary boosts, brought TSA pay in line with the rest of the federal government. As a result, the agency is already reporting more interest in job openings, and drastically reduced attrition rates. In April, Pekoske told House lawmakers that staff attrition has fallen by 9% since the historic pay raises last year. TSA’s fiscal 2025 budget request includes funding to continue the raise, as well as provide more career development opportunities for agency employees.

Under the new agreement, transportation security officers will see a streamlined process for grievance and arbitration, expanded official time, fewer restrictions on sick leave, increased uniform allowances and opportunities for local collective bargaining. The new CBA expands the previous agreement from 14 articles, now to 37.

“These changes make TSA a place where Americans want to work,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said at Wednesday’s signing ceremony. “It makes the TSA a place where anybody will want to come to work and feel like they are part of the team.”

At Thursday’s event, Pekoske told reporters that the latest Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) results showed the highest ever engagement and satisfaction in the agency’s history. Pekoske added that he hopes the new contract will set the stage for an even better labor-management relationship moving forward.

“I think what we ought to be thinking about is, where can we go from here? How can we continue this pivot to make sure that as an agency, every single one of us has a commitment to our people?” Pekoske said. “We should use [the CBA] as a pivot point to even greater relationships amongst all of us together.”

The agreement is a milestone for the agency, especially to employees who have been working at TSA for many years, and who have experienced a slow yet major shift in the ability for workers to organize.

“When I first started at the agency, we weren’t even allowed to join the union, much less bargain with the agency,” Mac Johnson, vice president of AFGE Council 100, said Thursday. “It took until 2007 for us to be able to join AFGE, and we weren’t even able to sit down at the table with TSA until 2011. This contract is the first one to be bargained with similar rights to Title 5. But our journey isn’t complete yet.”

Title 5 is the personnel system that sets pay, benefits and performance standards for the vast majority of federal employees. When Congress created TSA in 2002, it excluded the agency’s employees from the General Schedule pay scale and other provisions of the Title 5 personnel system.

In effect, the new collective bargaining agreement provides Title 5 protections to TSA workers, but AFGE leaders are already looking ahead to the next chapter. They are aiming to secure Title 5 rights for the long haul by putting Title 5 into law for TSA employees. That would cement many of the CBA’s new provisions, extending them beyond the seven years the contract will cover.

A new bicameral bill from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) aims to accomplish just that. The Rights for the TSA Workforce Act, which the lawmakers introduced on May 14, would give all 60,000 TSA employees Title 5 protections. The legislation has gained both Democrat and Republican cosponsors.

In a video message at Thursday’s event, Thompson said the new collective bargaining agreement “will have a fundamental impact on TSA’s ability to recruit and maintain employees, and carry out its security mission,” but added that “there’s still work to be done. We need to ensure these improvements are made permanent in law so that no future administration can seek to undo them.”

The post TSA, AFGE see milestone contract as ‘pivot point’ for frontline workforce first appeared on Federal News Network.

In the months since expanding one of its districts overseas, the American Federation of Government Employees is gaining even more traction in representing federal employees stationed in Europe.

After federal employees working at two locations in Germany voted to unionize on May 1, the Federal Labor Relations Authority issued a certificate of representation Tuesday, marking the start of the negotiations process between AFGE and the U.S. Army.

“We’re at the very, very beginning — even prior to the beginning — of a bargaining relationship with these new bargaining units we’ve picked up,” AFGE District 14 Special Assistant Peter Winch said in an interview with Federal News Network. “We have model contracts that we’ll present to them and see if they’re willing to agree to those model contract languages, but it’s all negotiable. It’s not just AFGE staff; we have to ask [employees] what they want … We will try to get those changes that they are looking for.”

The two groups of feds who just gained union representation are IT workers at the Army Enterprise Service Desk, 2nd Signal Brigade, in Kaiserslautern, Germany, as well as non-appropriated fund (NAF) employees working various hospitality jobs at the Army’s Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. In total, there are about 200 newly represented employees between the two locations.

“We organized the ski instructors and the massage therapists, and also the cooks and the custodians — hotel guest services,” Winch said. “They voted for AFGE representation, and this is the result of people coming to us.”

The collective bargaining road ahead

The two elections in May add two more bargaining units to the already-existing unit of nearly 400 civilian employees working for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) at the Kaiserslautern Military Community Center Exchange in Germany. That group of employees voted for union representation with AFGE in December 2023, and was automatically covered under the existing contract between AAFES and AFGE.

But for the two new units, Winch said the collective bargaining process will work a little differently. Negotiations will begin soon on a new contract, in which AFGE plans to incorporate standard provisions like a grievance procedure, dues deductions and official time. But other components will likely be included in negotiations as well, such as safety equipment and a clothing allowance.

Having union representation also means employees have more of a voice when there are issues with management, or any concerns that arise on the job.

“It runs the gamut, from basic Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) issues — discrimination or nepotism in hiring — to issues that get down to the scheduling of work and assignments, and promotions and appraisals,” AFGE District 14 Legal Rights Attorney Javier Soto said in an interview. “Our goal is to work with employees to achieve that level of participation needed to get to that point of an election.”

Another common issue for civilian DoD employees in Europe is “bait-and-switch,” a tactic where management offers one job to an employee who agrees to go overseas, only for that employee to be told they would be working in a different position once they arrived. Having union representation, AFGE officials have said, should help employees push back in those instances.

Additionally, AFGE is looking to address the current work rotation policy for employees stationed in Europe. The policy places restrictions on how feds can serve overseas.

“Say, in a hospital, you want the continuity of care, you want people who understand the patient base that comes in there,” Winch said. “I don’t think the rotation policy is in the best interest of the government now. We don’t have a position on exactly what should happen — on whether it should be repealed or just changed. We want to hear from our members what they want and go from there.”

AFGE aiming to take representation further

The process to gaining representation at the two new locations also garnered pushback and resistance from some managers, Soto and Winch said. But moving forward, the sentiment from AFGE is still largely hopeful.

“In terms of traction, we’re getting there,” Soto said. “There are a lot of misconceptions about unions in the federal workplace in Europe. For both the employees and management, it’s a learning process.”

“We’ll just keep saying to bargaining unit employees, ‘This is your legal right to form a union, to be represented on the job,’” Winch added. “In case you want to change working conditions, or you face discipline, you’ll be better off if you have a union. The morale will be better, the mission will be accomplished better.”

Although there are so far just a couple hundred bargaining unit employees overseas, the growth may eventually become much more immense. Last year’s expansion of District 14 made about 10,000 civilian employees serving overseas in Europe eligible for AFGE representation. AFGE also recently ironed out a contract for AFGE Local 3712, representing employees stationed in Naples, Italy, who are part of the U.S. Naval Support Activity for the Europe and Africa Navy Region.

And AFGE is certainly aiming to take that representation further. The union expects more elections to come, and is hoping to expand to all Defense Health Agency employees in Europe, as well as those at the Defense Logistics Agency. At DHA and DLA, new bargaining units would come automatically under the already-existing master agreement. AFGE officials also plan to accommodate other groups of federal employees outside of DHA and DLA as the interest and needs arise.

“There are many thousands of federal DoD employees, especially in Europe, who could really use the union on the job,” Winch said. “AFGE is interested in representing all the DoD employees who want a union and our whole federation is finding this intriguing, to be able to go back into Europe with Zoom calls and be able to represent in a distant ‘tele-manner’ that we didn’t [use] pre-COVID. So, we’re trying to adapt and overcome. And I think it’s working.”

The post AFGE set to negotiate after more feds overseas opt for representation first appeared on Federal News Network.

Agencies are well on their way to reaching the Biden administration’s in-office goals for federal employees, but the Office of Management and Budget still plans to hold leaders accountable until they reach full compliance.

Based on conversations with federal leaders, agencies are roughly 80% of the way toward hitting the administration’s target for at least half of feds’ work hours being spent in the office, OMB Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller told House lawmakers Tuesday.

“We’ve been clear that our expectation is agencies are achieving at least 50%, while giving them flexibility for how to deliver,” Miller said during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing. “We’ll hold them accountable for that.”

That 80% figure comes about a year after OMB first directed agencies to increase in-office presence. An April 2023 memo intended to strike a balance between in-office work and telework, while giving agencies leeway to determine what that would look like in practice. But several committee Republicans appear to be growing impatient with what they view as too long of a timeline for returning federal employees to the office — and what they said is a lack of workforce data from OMB.

In particular, some committee members during Tuesday’s hearing questioned Miller on why White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients’ pressure on agency leaders for in-office presence took place several years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It seems to me like COVID is ancient history right now,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said during the Oversight committee hearing Tuesday. “That email [from Zients], dated January 2024 — kind of recent — does it imply that things are going slower than your expectations?”

Echoing the stance that Zients has taken with agency heads, Miller said OMB expects agencies to completely follow through with implementing the 50% in-office presence — though he did not provide a specific deadline for implementation.

“The purpose of that approach was to strengthen teams and organizations, make sure that we had strong culture, make sure that we had innovative teams, make sure that we’re able to bring people on board,” Miller said during the hearing. At least half of federal employees never telework, as their job duties require them to be entirely on site, Miller added.

But in reaction to OMB’s return-to-office push, many federal employees as well as their unions have argued that telework is a crucial flexibility for strong federal recruitment and retention. They have repeatedly urged agencies to use lessons learned from the pandemic as a rationale to maintain higher telework levels — and not push a 50% return-to-office.

Office space concerns

In contrast, some Republican committee members said they believed a 50% in-office presence wasn’t a high enough goal. A few pointed to a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office, which revealed many agencies sitting at or below 25% capacity in their physical office spaces.

“For most of America, 50% would still seem like a low mark,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said to Miller during the hearing. “I mean, granted, that would be progress compared to 25% … [but] we don’t have agencies coming to us and saying, ‘Well, we don’t need this building anymore, or we don’t need this office space, so we can reduce our budget here to make up for it there’ — so I would just encourage you to continue to work on that.”

GAO, though, has said the challenge of handling federal office space long predates the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal property management has remained on GAO’s High Risk List since 2003. The underutilization of federal office space is a more complex issue than can’t be blamed solely on telework, GAO officials have said. In fact, by GAO’s calculations, even if an agency had 100% staff attendance, the office space it would still only be about two-thirds utilized.

The Public Buildings Reform Board has reported that agencies now have a “unique opportunity” to reinvest their budgets into more modern office amenities, if they’re able to sell or otherwise dispose of unneeded real estate.

During the hearing, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) encouraged OMB to follow suit of the private sector and look at ways to cut back on total office holdings by maintaining telework at least to some degree.

“The private sector sees the value in working from home, and so they’re capitalizing on that,” Lynch said. “They don’t need all this expensive space now … they’re operating more efficiently.”

Miller said the administration is heading in that direction with its efforts for agencies, but is still leaving room for adjustment later on, if needed.

“In crafting our governmentwide guidance, we have followed very closely the research and actions by the private sector,” Miller said. “Ultimately, we need to compete for talent … And right now, the research suggests that where we’re landing is the right answer. But of course, we’re going to be dynamic going forward.”

Additionally, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) pointed to reports showing that remote work and telework help increase diversity in the federal workforce.

“The administration has a significant amount of leverage to promote changes in the workforce, making it more reflective for people of all backgrounds … for people who face all types of barriers, like access to transportation, taking care of an aging relative or having to pick up their children from school,” Brown said.

Frustrations over in-office, telework data

At the same time, several committee members voiced concerns about delays and backlogs in public-facing federal services, which Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he blames on telework.

“You can see the frustration on our side of the aisle because we don’t believe the federal government is any more efficient or productive with its new, wide-open telework policy,” Comer said. “[Caseworkers] have had significant difficulty getting people on the phone at the [Department of Veterans Affairs], at the IRS, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the agencies go on and on … It appears that’s because they have a lot of their workforce still working from home.”

In contrast, a large majority of federal employees themselves have said telework actually improves their performance, and has positive ripple effects on agency recruitment and retention. A recent Federal News Network survey showed that about two-thirds of feds said they’re more productive while working from home.

During the hearing, Comer once again doubled down on his push to get deeper telework data from OMB and other agencies — asking OMB for details on the number of teleworking employees across government, and how telework impacts productivity. Unsatisfied with OMB’s response, Comer said he doubted that agencies have the information on hand at all.

“No one says we’re totally opposed to telework — we just want to see data that shows it’s more efficient,” Comer said. “And I don’t think you all have that data.”

The Office of Personnel Management releases an annual telework report, detailing figures on how many federal employees are teleworking at each agency. And the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) offers additional data on federal telework.

But in Congress, the push for deeper data continues to intensify. OMB is nearing a congressional deadline from the fiscal 2024 appropriations package, which tells OMB to turn over all agencies’ return-to-office “action plans” by late June.

The post OMB holding agencies ‘accountable’ for 50% in-office presence first appeared on Federal News Network.

When most agencies go to the bargaining table with their federal union, there’s already a clear starting point for negotiations. Labor and management officials usually agree to reopen a handful of articles from their existing collective bargaining agreement, then discuss and implement the various changes each party wants to make.

But for the Defense Health Agency, that’s not the case. After the agency’s employees unionized, the American Federation of Government Employees spent the better part of the last two years figuring out what employees’ rights will look like, encompassing everything from relocations and overtime work, to how to handle disciplinary actions.

“There’s no prior agreement, so you’re literally starting from scratch — you have to bargain everything for the first time,” AFGE Deputy General Counsel Cathie McQuiston said in an interview.

Although DHA employees voted to gain union representation with AFGE back in 2022, the labor and management parties didn’t open negotiations until October 2023. DHA finally reached a baseline master agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees on April 5.

The new interim agreement outlines, for the first time ever, cohesive policies on leave, work hours, official time, telework and much more for some 38,000 agency employees nationwide.

“This was a recognition for both parties, [deciding] jointly what are [the] basic matters that are important to have — rules of the road for both the union and management to follow,” McQuiston said.

DHA did not immediately respond to Federal News Network’s request for comment about the new interim agreement.

Building from an initial agreement for DHA headquarters, and with some minor tweaks, the interim contract now applies to all DHA bargaining unit employees across the country. DHA’s nationwide agreement encompasses hundreds of locations all under a single contract, similar to AFGE’s structure within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“We had just bargained [the headquarters agreements] in the last six months, we had gotten them through agency head review,” McQuiston said. “It didn’t make sense for either side to sit down and start from scratch when we’d just bargained something … that is [already] appropriate for the agency.”

DHA employees will have “input and influence”

DHA, first created 10 years ago, initially had a fairly limited mission of offering shared services to military medical organizations. But since 2017, the agency has been growing significantly. It now encompasses practically all aspects of the Military Health System. As part of that expansion, DoD reorganized about 45,000 health care employees into DHA, most of whom were previously working for individual military branches.

An estimated 75% of employees at DHA headquarters didn’t have union representation before the 2022 election that brought in AFGE as the union representative for the employees.

“Prior to them being transferred and combined in DHA, the Army had their own rules and regulations, the Navy had theirs, the Air Force had theirs. Everybody was dealing with different rules, different policies,” McQuiston said. “Now the representation provides the opportunity for employees to engage … and have input and influence when the decisions are made, and before they’re made.”

Now with the interim agreement in place, AFGE and DHA will move forward on negotiations within the next three months, with the goal of reaching agreements on even more articles to include in the contract.

But the exact parameters of what those negotiations will entail are up in the air. That’s because AFGE is also still working on establishing a bargaining council, which will eventually comprise agency employees who will be elected as representatives of the overall DHA workforce.

“They will be responsible for doing the bargaining, making the calls on priority,” McQuiston said. “We’re right now in discussions about what articles we’ll move. We certainly want to get the views of the workforce about issues that are important to them in the workplace day-to-day and incorporate their concerns.”

Although it’ll still be a while before everything is completely set, McQuiston said she believes the representation will have a positive impact for DHA personnel, even in the short term. Under the interim agreement, DHA employees now have an official process, for instance, to flag concerns for management, and official documentation of their rights they can point back to, if necessary.

McQuistion said especially with the recent executive order reestablishing labor-management forums as a requirement for all agencies, she hopes DHA employees will have more opportunities to be involved in the decision-making process for any workforce changes from management, and to be able to offer input along the way, rather than only dealing with implementation of workplace changes after the fact.

“I think it will provide a better workplace for the employees at the end of the day,” McQuiston said. “This is a big change, it’s a huge opportunity [and] I think it’s a huge net positive for these employees.”

The post DHA, AFGE cement workplace policies for 38K DoD health employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

Earlier this spring, several House lawmakers introduced a new bill to address a burgeoning post-pandemic trend: the use of employee monitoring technologies.

The “Stop Spying Bosses Act” would create new rules around the use of worker surveillance technologies. It would also establish a new division at the Labor Department to regulate workplace surveillance.

The legislation comes in response to an explosion in the use of everything from video surveillance to keylogging software to keep tabs on employees. A 2023 survey of 1,000 companies with remote or hybrid workforces found the vast majority use some form of employee monitoring. There’s even a new term for tech that enables this kind of continuous activity tracking: “bossware.”

As the country’s largest employer, where does the federal government stand? To date, there’s little evidence that federal agencies and their managers are taking up the more intrusive employee monitoring practices being embraced in the private sector.

But the unions that represent feds are also guarding against the potential as the technology evolves. National Federation of Federal Employees Executive Director Steve Lenkart said the issue is intertwined with the evolution of telework.

“As our technology improves, and we have more capabilities for people not to be in a centralized place, we’re going to have to invest in technologies that make it easier for that employee to function,” Lenkart said in an interview. “And there’s always going to be questions of supervision. And then it leads to questions of surveillance.”

SSA watchdog monitors employee computers

There is at least one instance where federal employees working remotely have had their computers monitored for performance.

In 2021, employees at the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General were subject to a survey of computer logs and telephone records to measure time online. Some employees were subject to disciplinary action or terminated.

While the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) — which represents more than 90% of SSA OIG agents – pushed back on that practice, SSA Inspector General Gale Ennis argued it was necessary “as stewards of taxpayer dollars, to hold employees accountable, when appropriate.”

“Failing to do so would be detrimental to public service, the OIG mission, and the morale of the many employees who go above and beyond in their contributions every day,” Ennis wrote in a September 2021 letter to the union.

Later that month, the FLEOA took a vote in which 98% of responding employees said they had “no confidence” in Ennis’s leadership. The use of computer logs for employee monitoring was among the issues cited by the union in its statement on the vote.

More than two years later, an FLEOA spokeswoman said the issue around the computer monitoring has yet to be resolved. “To our knowledge, the data analytics from employee monitoring are not being used for disciplinary actions as they were before, but they could be using it for other reasons,” the spokeswoman told Federal News Network.

In a statement for this story, FLEOA President Mat Silverman said SSA OIG employees were terminated “based on computer logs often without any corroborating or mitigating evidence from an employee’s immediate supervisor, raising serious doubts about the legitimacy of the terminations.”

“As agencies become increasingly skeptical about the benefits of remote work, we do fear the trend of remote monitoring will continue; however, we hope the strong criticism, high attrition, and decreased morale SSA OIG experienced will send a strong message to other agencies that this is neither an effective nor appropriate workplace policy,” Silverman said. “Ultimately, a workplace is successful when there is mutual trust, transparency, and confidence between employees and their leadership. Conversely, remote monitoring is demeaning to employees and undermines these important workplace values.”

In response to questions about the use of computer monitoring, an SSA OIG spokeswoman said, “Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General supervisors measure productivity and performance of their employees using performance plans.”

‘No rulebook’ on employee monitoring

As the telework era continues to evolve, Lenkart said it will take time to strike the balance between supervision and surveillance.

“I think there’s going to be a little bit of operational uncomfortableness,” he said. “If you don’t trust your employee enough where you have to watch them minute-by-minute, then that’s probably not a good candidate to be working home or the supervisor has trust issues that need to be addressed. There’s no rulebook written on this yet.”

While workplace collaboration technologies, like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, are key to remote work, some unions are keeping a close eye on how those technologies are used by management. The National Treasury Employees Union, for instance, said it “opposes the use of technology for anything other than its intended purpose.”

In a statement, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said the union negotiates language in contracts that any “new or upgraded workplace technology cannot be used to track and monitor employees, measure productivity or replace existing official methods for tracking time and attendance.”

“For example, monitoring an employee’s colored-dot status on Microsoft Teams is not an indicator of productivity or attendance, and we would enforce our contracts to contest agency managers trying to use it as the basis of discipline or an adverse action against an employee,” Greenwald continued.

On its “Telework FAQ” page, the Office of Personnel Management encourages supervisors to focus on what an employee is accomplishing, rather than what it “looks like” an individual is doing.

“By focusing on the work product instead of the work activity, many supervisors find they are better able to communicate clear expectations to their employees,” OPM writes. “The resulting agreement on job expectations often leads to increases in employee productivity and job satisfaction.”

OPM did not respond to questions about the potential use of employee monitoring technology within the federal government.

In a 2021 blog, the Government Accountability Office underlined how first-line supervisors are key to reporting whether they think an employee is abusing time and attendance requirements. While agencies are increasingly using automated timekeeping systems and other internal controls to detect misconduct, managers are “still the most important internal control for managing time and attendance,” GAO wrote.

That’s a sentiment Lenkart reiterated in highlighting the disparate nature of many federal jobs and the difficulty of measuring performance from time spent on a computer.

“In the end, it’s always going to come back to the local supervisor to determine whether you have a good employee or not,” he said.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Derace Lauderdale

Close to 80% of employers use monitoring software to track employee performance and online activity.

Source: CNBC

The post With ‘spying bosses’ on the rise, where do federal agencies stand on employee monitoring? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Ahead of a September deadline for agencies and unions to finalize their plans for recreating labor-management forums, the Office of Personnel Management is offering guidance on how federal leaders can best meet the new expectations.

Alongside a push to improve apprenticeship opportunities, a March 6 executive order from President Joe Biden called on agencies and federal unions to recreate the relatively informal forums. If implemented effectively, labor-management forums can improve employee satisfaction, engagement and organizational performance, while also mitigating possible disputes between the two parties, OPM said in March 13 guidance.

“We’ve seen examples where labor-management forums have worked on improving safety policies particularly for employees that work in hazardous jobs. There are many opportunities for them to tackle some tough issues that happen every day in every workplace,” OPM Deputy Associate Director for Accountability and Workforce Relations Tim Curry said in an interview. “We think that agencies and unions should see this as an opportunity to improve how agency operations work.”

As part of the executive order earlier this month, agencies now have until Sept. 3 to create and submit implementation plans to OPM on how they’ll reestablish labor-management forums. They’re a way for representatives from both management and a union to collaborate on personnel matters. The forums, usually outside the scope collective bargaining agreements, are meant to provide opportunities to come to agreements on any concerns or questions before personnel issues escalate.

Under the new executive order, and the subsequent OPM guidance, agencies and unions will also have to show through metrics and data how the forums are impacting engagement, satisfaction and organizational performance.

Agencies and federal unions have used labor-management forums for years as a tool to address employee concerns and aim to improve the workplace. In many cases, they can lead to savings in both time and costs.

“They work together to identify issues in the workplace,” Curry said. “They propose ideas and solutions to address these issues in a way to better serve the public and actually accomplish the agency mission in a better way.”

Labor-management forums had been around for years, up until a 2017 executive order during the Trump administration disbanded them.

In 2021, under the Biden administration, OPM once again green-lit labor-management forums. But the use of the forums was not required until Biden signed the new executive order, officially rescinding the 2017 order from Trump in the process.

Now with the new executive order, “some agencies might already be ahead of the game, and others may have some catching up to do,” Curry said.

Of course, each agency will have a somewhat different approach the executive order’s requirements. Labor-management forums, OPM said, are not one-size-fits-all. But the guidance still offers some broad strategies agencies can consider, such as developing a shared vision for what the forum should aim to achieve, and what issues it will cover.

“We would recommend that they focus on addressing each other’s interests and working together on developing mutually agreeable solutions that address those interests,” Curry said. “But also, agency leadership needs to show support for the forums from the top down, as well as the union leadership. We would want them to model the behavior that they would like to see lower-level managers and union representatives show.”

In that work, Curry said agencies will also have to evaluate and address any remaining obstacles in labor-management relations that stem from a series of now-rescinded executive orders from the Trump administration, which previously limited the scope of collective bargaining.

“We want to confirm with agencies that there are no more outstanding issues, which might be obstacles to moving forward on other issues for the forums to address,” Curry said.

Trying to get plans set up by September could cause agencies or unions to run into a few trouble spots. For example, OPM said in its guidance that there may be some resistance from either party, or even agency employees themselves.

In those instances, Curry said it’s important to keep in mind how the forums are meant to be structured, and what their real purpose is.

“Forums are not co-management arrangements, as some may believe, and we advise forums to address this early on,” Curry said. “Management is encouraged to have discussions with unions about issues before they make a management decision, and on the other hand, unions aren’t waiving their collective bargaining rights on matters discussed in the forums.”

Federal Labor Relations Authority Chairman Susan Tsui Grundmann said although the work to reach agreements in labor-management may at times be challenging, the results can be tremendous.

“One recent example in the wake of all our budgetary issues and to avoid furloughing our own employees, we actually gave up a whole floor in our headquarters, consolidating two floors into one. And I told our union vice president that this just had the makings of a disaster,” Grundmann said during a March 27 FLRA town hall. “But his remark was, ‘it makes it a whole lot easier when you get along.’ So whatever the future holds, we commit to have our internal union beside us to guide us and to allow us to lead by example.”

Both leading up to the September deadline and after it passes, agencies can lean on resources from OPM to address any concerns or questions. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service also offers guidance and advice on setting up and using the forums.

“These forums provide frontline employees with a more meaningful voice in agency operations and foster discussions about improving the effectiveness of government services,” National Treasury Employees Union National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement earlier this month. “It is our experience that pre-decisional input inherent in conversations between labor and management is a productive means to give employees a say in agency decisions, solve problems in a non-adversarial way, address workplace issues that hinder efficiency and improve services to the American people.”

The post OPM outlines how agencies, unions can recreate labor-management forums first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Census Bureau is looking to roll out a remote work policy it drafted at the end of last year, but is rethinking how many employees can opt in, after Congress recently set minimum utilization rates for federal buildings.

The Census Bureau agreed to a remote work policy last December, and a working group is working on implementation details.

Census Bureau Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer Ron Jarmin told employees in an all-staff email last week that once an implementation plan is finalized in the coming weeks, employees will be approved for remote work “in special situations determined by the remote work implementation working group.”

“Our policy must follow departmental and administrative guidelines and will have limits which significantly impact the number of employees who will be approved for remote work across the Census Bureau,” Jarmin wrote.

Jarmin said the bureau strongly recommends employees do not move outside the commuting area of their official duty station until they receive remote work approval.

Meanwhile, the Census Bureau is reconfiguring its headquarters to bring more Commerce Department employees under one roof.

American Federation of Government Employees Council 241 President Johnny Zuagar said in an interview with Federal News Network that the Census Bureau headquarters is undergoing renovations and giving up 50% of its headquarters space to accommodate employees from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bureau’s headquarters, he added, will shift to a hoteling model following the renovations, meaning employees will have to reserve a desk for the days they plan to work in-person.

“We have done what they’re saying. We looked at our real estate, and we redid it. We have consolidated with other agencies, we are moving to smaller spaces that are at other locations. So we’re doing exactly what they’re asking,” Zuagar said. “We’re using the space efficiently and effectively. We are making adjustments. This is going to take a couple of years to know where the right balance is, but we’ll find that out.”

AFGE Council 241 Vice President Vickie Martin said Census Bureau employees who work outside the Suitland, Maryland headquarters are expected to work in the office a minimum of two days per pay period — although in-office expectations vary by position. Zuagar said some employees are working in-person every day.

Martin said the union initially expected more Census employees would be eligible to enroll in the remote work policy, but language in the fiscal 2024 spending deal set minimum occupancy requirements for federal buildings, and “handcuffed us a little bit” on the scope of remote work.

Lawmakers, in the spending deal for the rest of fiscal 2024, are requiring agencies with an office space utilization rate of less than 60% to report to Congress on their efforts to reduce their real estate footprint.

Agencies as part of the appropriations package will also have to provide information on the average number and percentage of employees working in the office during a typical two-week pay period, as well as their recent telework policies.

“We’re not going to give up on expanding that and getting further flexibilities for our people. But, we’re also not going to jeopardize what they’ve been able to gain, as far as flexibilities now,” Martin said.

A Census Bureau spokeswoman said in a statement that the bureau’s headquarters is under construction to modernize the building and bring Bureau of Labor Statistics employees into the building. During the renovations, the spokeswoman said “employees have been working under maximum telework.”

The bureau expects to reopen its headquarters building this summer.

“Employees have been notified that they will receive a 60-day notice before headquarters begins a phased reopening and will be required to comply with existing policies upon their return,” the spokeswoman said.

Discover more now:

Return to office in 4 parts: Fed facing the May 5 deadline

Education’s return-to-office announcement ‘perplexing’ to union

Lawmakers call SBA’s return to office policy ‘extremely minimal’

Labor employees protest at their office for more telework riles up lawmakers 

The post Census Bureau rethinks scope of remote work policy, consolidates office space first appeared on Federal News Network.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said OMB had set a deadline for employees to return to the office at least half of the time by a certain date. The story has been updated to reflect that OMB has set no specific deadline. 

Spring has sprung, flowers are in bloom and federal employees at many agencies are feeling the effects of the return to the office bug.

From the Social Security Administration to the Interior Department to the Education Department, the return-to-the-office mandates are in full bloom.

Over the course of the last two-plus months, ever since White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients asked agency leaders on Jan. 19 to “double down” on their efforts to increase in-person work, the number of agencies pushing for more federal employees to return to the office by negotiating the new requirements with union representatives has accelerated.

The latest example is the Labor Department. Acting Secretary Julie Su told agency employees in a Feb. 9 email that she expects to provide an update no later than this Friday. This update comes after Labor delayed its plans to have non-management or bargaining unit employees back in the office more regularly in January.

“First, I want to acknowledge all of you who have sent me your thoughts, concerns, and personal stories about the upsides and downsides of increasing onsite work. While I can’t respond personally to them all, I’ve read your emails and correspondence and I hear you,” Su wrote in an email obtained by Federal News Network. “Your input on the impact this will have on your lives and the lives of your colleagues has been both informative and instructive as we support the administration’s efforts and as we work to ensure the long-term organizational health of the department.”

The push to have more employees in the office is difficult to understand for many employees.

On the FedNews channel on Reddit, anonymous posters who claim to be federal employees routinely highlight both the contradictory and frustrating policy changes that come from many agencies.

Many say the rationale for returning to the office remains unclear, and make the case that the work-life benefits continue to outweigh, in most cases, the in-person benefits.

Recent research by University of Pittsburgh professor Mark Ma and Yuye Ding, a Ph.D. student, seem to support that notion. The researchers found “RTO mandates hurt employee satisfaction but do not improve firm performance.” Ma and Ding analyzed Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 firms with RTO mandates.

“Instead of forcing everyone back to in-office work, high-performing employees who perform well at home should be allowed to continue at home. This would benefit the employee as well as the firm in the long-term through retention of high-performing employees, who can more easily find other jobs,” the researchers wrote.

Beyond maybe federal pay and benefits changes, few topics have elicited as much emotion and consternation as return-to-office mandates.

The following four stories are among the most recent examples of this ongoing debate happening across many agencies. It’s clear the RTO answer for many agencies isn’t as cut-and-dry as many would like it to be and like the initial months during COVID of working from home, the solution will come by trial, experience and through a little innovation by managers and employees.

Education’s return-to-office announcement ‘perplexing’ to union

Lawmakers call SBA’s return to office policy ‘extremely minimal’

Census Bureau reconsidering remote work policy

Labor employees protest at their office for more telework riles up lawmakers 

The post Return to office in 4 parts: Feds facing the pressure to reduce telework first appeared on Federal News Network.

Protesting at your office for the right to telework more captures those same vibes.

That is what happened in March when Labor Department employees in Boston went to their office to protest to retain their telework privileges.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Scott Franklin (R-Fla.) called that decision by employees “hypocritical.”

Ernst and Franklin wrote to Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su seeking more details about what the protest cost the department.

“Clearly, these employees know how much more effective they can be when they show up in person. We just wish they had the same level of dedication to serving Americans that they do to serving themselves,” the lawmakers wrote. “As White House Chief of Staff [Jeff] Zients said in January, agencies are still ‘not where they need to be’ on returning employees to the office. If your employees can show up to the office to protest, they can show up to the office to work.”

Ernst and Franklin want Su to respond to answers to three questions by April 10:

• How much taxpayer-funded union time did representatives of AFGE Local 948 log with the Department of Labor (DOL) in the four weeks preceding their rally on March 19, 2024?
• Were the DOL employees paid—either through taxpayer-funded union time reimbursements or otherwise—for their protest against returning to the office, which they staged at their office?
• If so, what is the cost to the DOL including but not limited to labor and resources—of this protest?

Emails seeking comments about the lawmaker’s criticisms to David Gonzalez, the AFGE District 2 national vice president, which includes federal employees in Massachusetts, were not answered.

A Labor Department spokesperson said in an email to Federal News Network, “The department continues to engage with our employee unions over the updated in-person work requirements with the goal of building a stronger sense of community in our department. We are committed to that process, and we support the First Amendment rights of all workers, including our own staff, to protest.”

Labor’s impending decision

Labor Department leadership and its union representatives have been in ongoing negotiations about return to the office plans since at least January. Labor initially wanted employees back in the office at least five days per two-week pay period starting Jan. 28. But Su delayed the implementation about a week before it was set to take effect citing ongoing labor-management discussions over the planned telework reduction.

For members of the Senior Executive Service (SES), Schedule C, managers and supervisors, they have been working in the office at least five days per pay period, since Oct. 23.

Su wrote to staff in a Feb. 9 email, which Federal News Network obtained, that the “department remains actively engaged in negotiations with our Unions. I will provide you with an update no later than April 5.”

This impending decision is likely why the employees in Boston held the protest.

Su wrote to employees in November, reminding them of their impending changes that will likely still apply later this month.

“For our employees impacted by this change, if you have a telework agreement that will need to be updated in TeleworkXpress to support the new in-person work requirement, please work with your supervisor to do so. If you don’t have a telework agreement on file, the expectation is that you are reporting in-person every workday unless you are on approved leave, official detail away from the agency worksite, or official travel. Keep in mind, management may recall DOL employees who participate in telework or remote work to work in-person on a temporary or permanent basis as needed to support mission and business needs,” she wrote on Nov. 28. “Further, all employees who participate in telework are expected to manage their work schedules to meet the in-person work requirement even if it means switching their in-person day(s) to a different day(s) during the pay period when they are approved to be on leave on what would have otherwise been an in-person day(s).”

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The post Labor employees show up to protest for more telework first appeared on Federal News Network.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced that all agency staff will have to work in person at least five days per pay period beginning May 20. That includes the 2,400 employees in the American Federation of Government Employees bargaining unit.

“Our return to greater in-person presence not only gives us more opportunity for collaboration, engagement and innovation, but it also brings us into alignment with other federal agencies across government that have been increasing their own in-person presence,” Cardona said in a March 28 all-staff email, obtained by Federal News Network.

Currently, most Education employees are either remote workers, or on a telework schedule that requires them to work in person just two days per pay period.

Sheria Smith, AFGE president for Local 252, which represents Education employees, called the return-to-office announcement “perplexing.” She said the union has not had the opportunity to negotiate or come to an agreement on the changes. Labor-management negotiations are opening in April for a few collective bargaining articles, but currently, telework is not on that list.

“We’re more productive in our work for citizens and it is more cost-effective for us to work at home,” Smith said in an interview. “What would they be sending us to the office for? And to do it … bypassing the union, without giving the union the opportunity to negotiate any change. They’re just sending it out as if it was already bargained and already settled.”

Considering the many return-to-office announcements from agencies, the union had expected to receive proposals on any telework changes when they were first outlining the parameters of the upcoming negotiations.

“For an issue that they know is important, that we’ve been unequivocal in representing how important that is to our colleagues, our coworkers [and] how people have made familial decisions — and for us to not even receive proposals on this before it was sent out to the bargaining unit employees is, in our view, outrageous,” Smith said.

Since Cardona’s email went out, AFGE has received at least 100 emails from employees concerned about the upcoming changes. The union has already notified a mediator at the Federal Labor Relations Authority regarding the return-to-office announcement.

Cardona, however, said in the email the changes would still be “subject to fulfilling bargaining obligations.” A department spokesperson added that the agency “looks forward to partnering with the union and engaging in productive bargaining discussions to support a smooth transition for covered employees.”

The return-to-office changes, as outlined in Cardona’s announcement, apply to those with telework agreements. They also apply to those who are considered telework-eligible, but who are currently working remotely. Any employees who live more than 50 miles from an agency facility and those who were hired with a fully remote job offer are exempt from the new policy.

In preparation for more time spent in the office, Cardona said the agency has adjusted office space arrangements, IT and other logistics. Moving forward, Cardona said all Education offices should also consider scheduling “core collaboration days,” or certain days when employees can coordinate to all work in person on the same day.

Education employees’ views of telework have hardly changed. During the Trump administration, the department previously cut back on telework. At the time, the vast majority of employees said the changes decreased productivity, required staff to use more sick leave and annual leave, and hurt agency morale to the point that many considered leaving the agency.

Since then, many employees were largely teleworking during the pandemic, and continued regularly working from home under an agreement established in 2021.

But now, “for whatever reason, they want us to have watercooler conversations that we, frankly, have been having over Teams,” Smith said. “But they want us in person.”

Discover more now:

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The post Education’s return-to-office announcement ‘perplexing’ to union first appeared on Federal News Network.

House Small Business Committee Vice Chairman Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) said in a March 20 oversight hearing that he was “extremely skeptical” of SBA’s request for a 20% budget increase in fiscal 2025, “as there is no evidence the agency is operating effectively or efficiently.”

Among his concerns, Luetkemeyer said SBA has “implemented an extremely minimal return to work policy.”

“This is a direct slap in the face to our entrepreneurs who don’t have the luxury of a day off or the ability to sit in their pajamas and work from home,” Luetkemeyer said.

SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman told lawmakers that employees are in the office at least five days a pay period, “complying with the standards” set governmentwide by White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients.

“We have 50% occupancy on any given day, at a minimum,” Guzman said. “The whole of SBA, across the country, has returned to work.”

Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) said members of the committee toured SBA’s headquarters on Dec. 3, 2023, and saw “empty office spaces” throughout the building.

“If we’re not going to use these buildings, let’s shut them down. Let’s consolidate and save money for the American taxpayer,” Alford said.

“I’ve long been concerned with SBA’s lax work-from-home policy, and what that means for our nation’s 33 million small businesses, getting them the help they need, when they need it,” Alford said.

Guzman said SBA occupies two-thirds of its headquarters building, and that three other agencies occupy the rest of the space.

“We went to the floors that SBA fully occupies,” Guzman told lawmakers. “We are looking constantly at our space requirements, aligned with our facilities’ needs.”

Acting American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 228 President Niklas Gustafsson said bargaining unit employees are expected to work in the office a minimum of four days per pay period, “with additional days, depending on the position.”

“Managers have the discretion to have a higher amount, if there’s a particular need,” Gustafsson said. “For example, if you are a receptionist or work in the mail room. If you’re in a position that requires more in-office presence, that would then be required.”

SBA managers and members of the Senior Executive Service, he added, are expected to work in the office at least five days per pay period.

“Employees recognize that there are in-person, in-office functions that need to be accomplished, and SBA bargaining unit employees are professionals and don’t object to that,” Gustafsson said. “However, many employees are confused and do not understand what it is they are accomplishing in the office, when they are in the office, that is different from when they are teleworking.”

Gustafsson said that he and his coworkers are carrying out the same duties each day, whether or not they’re in the office. That means SBA employees sometimes spend their in-office days in videoconference meetings with colleagues located across the country.

“My in-office days look no different than a telework day, from a work process or productivity point of view, and I think that’s true for the vast majority of our bargaining unit,” he said.

Committee Chairman Roger Williams (R-Texas), Luetkemeyer, Alford and five other committee Republicans say SBA office space remains mostly underutilized and is wasting taxpayer dollars.

The lawmakers are asking SBA to clarify its return to office requirements, and are asking why the agency is asking for $42 million for its rent budget in it 2025 budget proposal — a 30% increase from 2023 levels — when it already has “rows and rows of empty desks.”

“Despite the Biden administration’s belated realization that work-from-home policies are counterproductive to servicing the American public, it appears that the SBA has failed to implement an effective strategy to return its employees. Nearly a year after the Biden Administration ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, the SBA is still not back to work,” lawmakers wrote in a March 27 letter to Guzman.

Congressional Republicans have repeatedly pointed to SBA as an agency with underutilized office space.

Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee Ranking Member Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) placed SBA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development on the top of her “naughty list” of agencies with underutilized offices last December.

Data from the Government Accountability Office shows HUD and SBA both had a 7% average utilization rate in early 2023 — the lowest rate of all other major agencies.

HUD and SBA officials told GAO their headquarters buildings were undergoing renovation during the data collection period, contributing to a decrease in attendance.

GAO, in a report last summer, found all 24 of the agency headquarters offices it reviewed had excess space, including 17 that had an average building capacity of just 25%.

Discover more now:

Return to office in 4 parts: Fed facing the May 5 deadline 

Education’s return-to-office announcement ‘perplexing’ to union

Census Bureau reconsidering remote work policy

Labor employees protest at their office for more telework riles up lawmakers 

The post GOP lawmakers pan SBA return-to-office plans as ‘extremely minimal’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

A Postal Service letter carrier is one of the most public-facing jobs in the federal government.

They deliver mail and packages to 163 million addresses across the U.S. at least six days a week. They’re a routine presence in their customers’ lives, which means they’re often the first to realize when something on their route isn’t quite right.

It turns out letter carriers are often first on the scene in the case of an emergency. Every year, USPS employees rescue people from house fires, car crashes and medical emergencies while on their routes.

Those letter carriers also see when customers are going through a hard time, and find ways to give back to the community.

The National Association of Letter Carriers tracks about 150 of these acts of heroism from its members every year. But each year, the union recognizes a select few for extraordinary acts of service.

Some of NALC’s Letter Carrier Heroes of the Year put their own safety on the line to help save lives. Others led toy drives in their community and held annual charity concerts to make the holiday season extra special for families in need.

NALC National President Brian Renfroe said letter carriers provide an essential service to their customers, and are the “eyes and ears of their communities.”

“No one knows our communities and our neighborhoods like letter carriers. We deliver on our routes six and even seven days a week. We get to know our customers. We get to know them better each and every day,” Renfroe said during an award ceremony last Wednesday.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said letter carriers are often called on to “go above and beyond the call of duty when something unpredictable happens.”

“Sometimes, it requires an incredible act of heroism. When our carrier happens to be in a life-altering, defining moment and follows his or her instinct to do the right thing above all else,” DeJoy said. “That carrier, despite the personal risk involved, acts selflessly and helps others, making that carrier a hero.”

Phillip Moon, a letter carrier who’s worked the same route for 27 years in Amarillo, Texas, received the National Hero of the Year award. Last October, he saved a woman from a pitbull who was attacking her and her two dogs.

“I noticed it was mauling her. It had her by the leg and was just doing this number on her. So I jumped out of my truck and went to help, and was able to get the dog off of her by beating on it with my hand on its head. And it turned her loose,” Moon said.

That gave Moon the moment he needed to pull the woman into his truck, away from the dog and start treating her wounds.

“I noticed she was bleeding very bad. It enabled me to get to my phone, and call 911. They told me that I needed to get a compress on this wound right away. And all I could think of was to use my shirt to make a compress. I took my shirt off and mashed it down real hard, kept the compress on it, talking to the 911 operator,” Moon said.

Moon says he’s honored to receive the award, but doesn’t think he’s a hero — just someone who did the right thing.

“I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m just very grateful and honored and thankful that I was in a place where I could be of some assistance to somebody in need,” he said.

Kyle Mailman (yes, that’s his actual name) received one of this year’s Vigilant Hero Awards for saving a woman from a natural gas leak in her home.

“I was getting ready to walk up and I can smell natural gas. So I go up to the door and I hit the floor. I started to choke a little bit, with how concentrated it was there in the entryway. And my first thought was, ‘If it’s coming from inside the house, this is really, really bad,'” Mailman said.

Mailman knocked on the door, and a resident answered. But he knew something wasn’t quite right.

“I’d had natural gas poisoning 20 years prior, so I knew a little bit about it. And we started going over the symptoms of it. She was irritable, she was fatigued. She was having trouble comprehending very basic things that normally she could. And I said, ‘Get out of the house, get everybody out.'”

Mailman’s suspicions were correct. When the gas company arrived on the scene, it turned out gophers had chewed through the gas line, creating a major gas leak in Mary’s fireplace.

These awards don’t just go to letter carriers who respond to an emergency. They also go to letter carriers who give back to their community, and keep doing so year after year.

NALC recognized four New York City letter carriers for launching a nonprofit that organizes holiday toy drives.

Earnest Twomley is one of the carriers who received the award. He said this all began a decade ago, with a chance encounter on the street.

“I was delivering my route. And I come across a family coming out of a cab in the middle of the street. A little girl was standing there screaming, crying. Having three kids of my own, I know what pain is, and I know what a tantrum was. I saw that she was in pain, walked over to her and said, ‘Have you ever been delivered to your apartment by a mailman?’ And she just looked up and smiled,” Twomley  said. “I picked her up, carried her a couple of fights. That stopped the little girl from crying. So when I came out of the building, one of the tenants says, ‘That was a nice thing you did … She just came back from Sloan Kettering [Cancer Center]. She has a brain tumor and she had a treatment.’ So that’s why she was in pain.”

This happened around Thanksgiving, so Twomley told the girl to write a letter to Santa.

USPS enables volunteers to “adopt” a child’s letter to Santa through its Operation Santa program and send a gift through the mail.  In this case, Twomley was the one checking everything off her list.

After that, Twomley said things just snowballed from there.

“We started one toy drive that led to another toy drive, that led to doing other stuff as well for the community,” he said.

Since then, Twomley and his fellow carriers created a nonprofit called Better Angels of Human Nature and donated hundreds of toys to children across the city.

Better Angels isn’t an official USPS program, but Twomley says he’s got big aspirations for his enterprise.

“We can take this on a national level,” he said. “Just think of the eyes of these kids. You would think it’s just a toy. But then again, we go far and beyond — and that’s us postal workers. We are on the frontline.”

Besides Twomley, NALC also recognized letter carriers David Correa, Heriberto Rodriguez and Daniel Weber for their contributions to the Better Angels program.

The post ‘We are on the front line:’ USPS letter carriers recognized for heroic acts first appeared on Federal News Network.