Remote workers continue to be an essential part of the federal workforce, but that could change if two newly introduced bills in the Senate are signed into law. If passed, federal telework employees could see both pay and retirement benefits decrease.
The Federal Employee Return to Work Act, introduced by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., would exclude the grand majority of federal employees who telework at least one (1) day a week from receiving raises and locality pay, currently afforded to them for their office location being in a high-cost-of-living area, despite working from home. This means some federal employees who get paid more because they live in higher-cost cities would not see any raises or locality pay as a part of their compensation.
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, 17 of the 24 federal agencies were using 25% or less of their headquarters building’s capacity at the beginning of 2023. Six of those agencies had more than 90% vacancies in their buildings, while their employees still received locality bonuses of more than 16%, according to the report. Some of the agencies included in those numbers are the Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the GAO report also states.
However, vacancy of federal buildings has no implication on the success of employees working from home. Cassidy said in a statement that he based the formulation of his proposed bill on the premise that the government shouldn’t pay employees who don’t show up to work.
Further, working from home or remotely is not the same as not showing up for work. If an employee is working a full day and successfully completing their assigned duties while working from home, there is no basis for saying that employee is not showing up for work. Physical presence in a government building and completion of a workday and assigned tasks are not the same thing.
A second bill introduced by Cassidy, the Federal Employee Locality Accountability in Retirement Act, would exclude locality pay when calculating retirement payments for employees who are enrolled in the federal retirement system, if signed into law.
About 1.2 million retired employees are receiving annuity payments from the federal retirement system, while some estimates show locality pay can add up to 30% of the employee’s salary, according to the statement by Cassidy. The amount an employee receives through the Federal Employees Retirement System is determined in part by the average of the individual’s highest three consecutive years of base pay. Civil servants who receive higher locality pay also receive more benefits in retirement, according to Cassidy.
While some lawmakers want to see more workers back in their offices, both bills could potentially impact tens of thousands of federal employees with little thought of the procedural and substantive claims that could be filed.
Additionally, the bills conflate vacant buildings with employees not doing their jobs. The federal government already has ways to measure and respond to an employee not completing their work or failing to log on and work an entire workday. Those performance and disciplinary measures are already in place. These two bills seek to unfairly penalize successful employees who work from home at least one (1) day a week.
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