Congressional committees tackle bills governing telework, marijuana and labor unions

Congressional committees dedicated to federal workforce issues were busy Wednesday, as both panels advanced bills impacting federal personnel policy via markup hearings.

On the Senate side, lawmakers on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 12-2 in favor of the Telework Transparency Act, (S. 4043)  a measure introduced last spring by Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, that requires that federal agencies publish their telework policies on their websites. It also requires agencies to establish automated systems to track employees’ use of telework and its impact on federal building occupancy rates and agency performance.

And the lawmakers voted 9-5 to advance the Dismantling Outdated Obstacles and Barriers to Individual Employment—or DOOBIE—Act (S. 4711), another measure sponsored by Peters, who chairs the panel. The bill would codify changes recently implemented by the Biden administration to federal hiring and security clearance policies that clarify that past marijuana consumption cannot be sole reason for denial of a federal security clearance or federal job application.

Though no lawmakers discussed either bill at the hearing itself prior to the votes, Peters said in a statement he would continue to work to ensure that federal law is updated to align with the recent policy change.

“The federal government must adapt its hiring practices to reflect the evolving legal and social landscape of our nation,” Peters said. “My bill takes a crucial step by aligning federal policy with existing agency guidance, ensuring that past marijuana use alone doesn’t automatically disqualify talented individuals from public service. This approach will expand our talent pool and create a fairer, more inclusive hiring process.”

Party Lines in the House

The atmosphere was less subdued in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, as lawmakers jousted over measures governing federal sector labor relations and the federal government’s annual survey measuring employee engagement and morale.

First, the panel considered the Manager Attitudes and Notions According to Government Employee Responses—or MANAGER—Act (H.R. 9593). Introduced by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the measure requires the Office of Personnel Management to devote a section of the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to questions specific to federal managers.

“Each year, the Office of Personnel Management administers a government-wide survey of agency employees, the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey,” said committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. “While that survey is completed by all federal employees, there are no specific questions for supervisors, so the unique views of managers is unaccounted for.”

As a matter of fact, while the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey in recent years has indeed been a census, managers are consistently overrepresented in results, as many frontline federal employees work in the field or in jobs where they do not have regular access to a computer, such as Transportation Security Administration screeners. Last year, the survey had an overall response rate of 39%, and 22% of respondents reported to be federal supervisors, while managers make up only 14% of the federal workforce.

Democrats said that while they support better feedback channels and support for federal supervisors in theory, the bill prescribes a series of leading questions regarding managers’ ability to discipline or remove poor performers. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the committee’s ranking member, said OPM warned the committee that the questions included in the bill were not devised to produce reliable data, but that committee Republicans have thus far declined to amend the legislation.

“While we agree that surveys specific to the concerns of federal workforce managers should be conducted on a more consistent basis, it’s unclear whether the intent of the proposed legislation is to require a new managerial section to the existing Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, or to require a standalone annual survey of managers,” Raskin said. “This basic ambiguity suggests the survey was not designed with practical application in mind. Moreover, the bill prescribes specific questions that are hyper-focused on the punitive responsibilities of senior managers.”

Sessions ultimately said that he would entertain changes to the questions listed in the bill, but suggested that Democrats and the administration were merely scared that such surveys would reveal that managers are opposed to telework or other Biden administration workforce policies.

“We in fact did not go for the most negative parts of this addition of words to be added and questions to be asked; we went to the ones managers themselves have provided us,” Sessions said. “Managers across the government who say they want to make sure when they put forth the issues of managing the workforce, of listening to employees, of trying to make their business work, that they did not put themselves in jeopardy . . . There are a number of facts and factors that happened with this administration that decided to change—and then not follow—with respect to employees reporting to their work locations.”

The measure passed by a 22-18 party-line vote.

The committee also passed, this time by a 21-18 vote, the Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallets Act (H.R. 9594), introduced by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa. The measure would require every federal agency to charge its corresponding federal employee unions for the salaries associated with union officials’ use of official time, as well as office space and other services, and it would allow agencies to unilaterally decertify a union that refuses or fails to pay.

“This remedies a longstanding injustice: taxpayers bearing the financial burden of federal employees paid to conduct union activities when they otherwise would be performing the job they were actually hired to do,” Perry said. “We’re not saying that bargaining unit activities shouldn’t occur. But that time should be compensated, because you’re not doing what you were really hired for.”

Perry cited a 2017 Government Accountability Office report that found that 346 Veterans Affairs Department employees spent 100% of their work hours on official time. During the period studied in that report—fiscal 2015—VA’s population of bargaining unit employees was 290,000 workers, according to OPM data.

Raskin blasted the bill as “simple union busting,” noting both that official time is tightly regulated to prevent internal union business being conducted on government time, as well as that the practice of offering official time saves money by resolving disputes much more cheaply than litigation.

“What they’re doing [with this bill] is they’re really challenging a central premise of labor-management law that goes back more than half a century, in both the public and private sectors,” he said. “The way private sector collective bargaining agreements work is that if there are shop stewards, who work to pursue grievances or negotiate contracts or help manage the workplace, they continue to be paid under their previous salaries. There’s nothing remotely extraordinary or strange about that at all, and so what they’re really attacking of course is the whole idea of having labor unions in the first place.”