Federal telework would be capped under a new House bill

Another bill seeking to curtail federal telework has recently emerged in the House. 

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., joined the recent push to limit and standardize federal agencies’ approach to allowing employees to work outside of the office with his Show Up To Work Act, introduced on Dec. 6.

The legislation comes after Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, recently issued a report that alleged a third of all federal employees are entirely remote workers, strikingly at odds with an August Office of Management and Budget report that said 54% worked entirely in-person and only 10% worked remotely.

Ogles’ bill wouldn’t outright eliminate telework, but it does cap agency use of the practice to 25% per pay period, or roughly two days.

Agency heads would be able to request waivers to the 25% limit under the bill, but would have to provide written certification for each individual request to the House Oversight and Accountability and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees demonstrating  that “additional telework for that individual will improve agency efficiency and performance and provides in writing to the committees an explanation of why it will do so in that employee’s case.’’

The battle over federal telework has been gradually heating up, as both the Biden administration and congressional Republicans have pressed for their versions of return-to-office policies. 

In Congress, GOP legislators have pitched a series of bills that call for reducing telework through methods like cutting locality pay for employees who telework for at least one day per pay period or returning it to pre-pandemic levels. 

The debate has reached a fever pitch recently with the incoming administration and its proposed non-government advisory panel dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, with its heads, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, calling for telework reductions as a method of attrition to help winnow the size of the federal civilian workforce.   

OMB guidance from 2023 called on agencies to scale back pandemic-era levels of telework, while monitoring their "organizational health and organizational performance" on an ongoing basis, while the Office of Personnel Management has encouraged agencies to make telework a portion of its workforce policies.

How effective the proposed legislation — or policies offered by the DOGE panel and its aligned congressional subcommittees — remains to be seen, especially for agencies who have negotiated telework into their employee collective bargaining agreements, such as the Social Security Administration did recently. 

Ogles’ bill was referred to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.