More Federal Agencies Make Plans to Scale Back Remote Work

The Capitol Hill chorus calling for government agencies to cut back on remote work has been growing for some time.

In January, for example, House Republicans introduced a bill that would oblige federal employees who worked in-person before the start of the coronavirus pandemic to return to their pre-pandemic work arrangements.

In May, Congressional Republicans demanded updated telework statistics as well as a report on “any adverse impacts” telework and remote work have had on government agency performance, saying that the Biden administration’s efforts to dial back government telework have not been adequate.

The Biden administration’s efforts on this front were punctuated with an April memo directing federal agencies to refresh their work environment plans and policies to “reflect the expectation that agency headquarters and equivalents generally continue to substantially increase meaningful in-person work in federal offices.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) became the first agency to officially respond to that call, announcing in May that VA employees on telework agreements in the National Capital Region will soon be required to report for a minimum of five days in the office each pay period.

Soon after, Federal Times predicted that the VA’s announcement put government employees on notice, and “could be the first wave in a tsunami of federal workers resuming their pre-pandemic routines—or searching for new jobs.”

Recent weeks have seen at least two more ripples, as two more large government agencies—the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)—have revealed their plans to reduce remote work options.

A Strong Response

Starting in January, FDIC employees will be required to work on site three days per week, Federal Times recently reported, noting that the change affects most employees located at FDIC headquarters as well as its regional and area officers. The new arrangement will not apply to field office examiners who work at banks, and employees will be limited to teleworking two days per week, effective Jan. 1, 2024, according to Federal Times.

The agency’s employees had previously operated under mandatory telework rules for 29 months, until the FDIC began reopening offices in 2022, Federal Times reported. Upon the coronavirus pandemic’s arrival in early 2020, the agency transitioned most of its 6,000 employees and more than 1,000 contractors to telework.

While FDIC employees won’t be coming back to the office en masse until January, workers at CMS are expected to return much sooner.

In an agencywide email, employees at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) were recently informed that CMS will begin shifting employees in the U.S. Capitol region back to the office this fall, according to Federal Times.

Employees living in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. commuting area “will be switched from remote to telework designations,” wrote Federal Times’ Molly Weisner, adding that CMS says it will remain a hybrid workplace. With the new designation, these workers’ duty stations will change from their home to the office, according to CMS, which has a telework agreement of eight days per pay period, according to Federal Times, which notes that roughly one quarter of the CMS workforce is considered eligible for telework.

(Per the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, telework refers to arrangements where the employee is expected to report to work both at an agency worksite and alternative worksite on a regular and recurring basis each pay period. Remote work does not involve an expectation that the employee regularly reports to the agency worksite each pay period.)

Federal employees’ affinity for remote work became clear throughout the pandemic, with surveys showing many government employees feel that working remotely has actually increased their productivity, for example.

CMS employees are apparently not pleased with the new arrangement, and were reportedly caught off-guard by the announcement, with Anita Autrey, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local Union 1923, telling Federal Times that the organization’s workers “were just completely taken aback.” The union has already filed two unfair labor practice complaints in response to the agency’s plan, and “expects the agency to negotiate changes before rolling them out,” Weisner wrote.

Workers at the FDIC seem to have had a similar reaction to the agency’s new telework plan, according to Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which intends to respond with a counterproposal.

“NTEU and the frontline employees we represent at FDIC strongly oppose the agency’s plan to disregard previous negotiated agreements on telework policy and require employees to report to the office significantly more days per period than is necessary,” Reardon said in a statement, via Federal Times.

“The agency’s announcement is especially counterproductive, because, if implemented, [it] will weaken morale and, we fear, cause some of the agency’s valuable and highly trained employees to retire or seek alternative employment.”