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Will 2022 Be the Year That Federal Workers Finally Go Back to Work?

Posted on Tuesday, December 14, 2021
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AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott

work from home

When President Joe Biden assumed office in 2020, he made it explicitly clear that ending the pandemic and getting Americans back to work was his main priority. At the time, it seemed natural to assume that these plans included federal government workers whom Biden now directly oversees. However, nearly a year later, even with 90% of all federal employees now vaccinated, most federal employees are still working from home. Even as the rest of the country returns to work, the sprawling complexes of massive federal buildings in the heart of Washington D.C. are mostly empty. The streets are deserted, and coffee shops and restaurants are still struggling to stay afloat due to the decrease in foot traffic. The Deep State has become the Asleep State, leading many Republican lawmakers to question the delay in getting government workers—who are still collecting their full salaries—back on the job.

If there is one federal agency that undoubtedly should be showing up for work, it would be the Centers for Disease Control. However, in a hearing last month, Bidens CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, inadvertently let slip that it’s far from “business as usual ” for federal employees under her leadership. According to Senator Bill Cassidy who questioned her, more than 75% of CDC’s federal employees were still working remotely and not in their office. While Walensky declined to confirm the Senator’s figures directly, she affirmed that essential lab employees were coming in but otherwise failed to provide any clear guidance as to how or when the rest of the staff would be returning to in-person full-time work.

The problem doesn’t stop with the CDC – and it doesn’t appear that telework is going anywhere soon. The U.S. Federal Office of Personnel Management made it very clear that, as far as the federal government is concerned, remote work is here to stay. Under Biden, for the first time since 2011, OPM revised its telework policy to explicitly encourage Government Agencies to “expand telework, remote work permanently.”

The prospect of widespread, permanent telework raises several questions about the fulfillment of federal agencies’ missions—questions of fiscal responsibility, cybersecurity, privacy, and good government. It certainly must strike many Americans as galling that, while the Biden administration is pushing to fire unvaccinated workers from their jobs, fully vaccinated federal employees are not even being mandated to show up for work.

Evidence is already piling up that telework policies are affecting the productivity and effectiveness of federal bureaucracies (to the extent that they were ever effective, to begin with). As of early November, Americans were waiting 12 to 18 weeks to get a passport – a process that normally takes just 4 to 6 weeks. The IRS also had yet to process 6.8 million 2020 tax returns; there were more than 182,000 outstanding claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Social Security recipients were citing a “dire need” for in-person appointments. Newly married women seeking to change their names are being advised that if they send in their identification for the paperwork, they cannot be guaranteed when they will get it back. All of this prompted more than 40 Senators to pen a letter to government agencies urging them to return to in-person work, citing “widespread lack of responsiveness and accessibility across the federal government on account of current agency work plans.”

Government bureaucrats may also be taking advantage of expanded telework to receive more pay than they should. Salary for government employees is directly tied to where their office is located. As many offices are located in Washington D.C. or other large cities, federal employees receive salaries that are significantly higher than much of the country due to the higher cost of living. However, since the pandemic began, many federal workers have completely relocated out of the capital and settled in areas with far lower costs of living. Despite this, they continued to earn an income that was tied to the cost of living in the D.C. Metro area.

Instead of working to curb this clear exploitation of the system, OPM has announced that those federal employees who are eligible to return to the office only need to be present two days out of every pay period to qualify for D.C.-based income. In theory, an employee could live in a rural, low-income, part of the country and be paid at D.C. rates so long as they show up in the office every two weeks. And this policy only applies to employees who are eligible to return to the office; many are still not required to be in office, even if they are vaccinated or otherwise at low risk from the virus.

At a time in which Biden finds himself struggling to fulfill his campaign promises and even ensure basic government functions, mandating federal employees return to the office seems like an obvious decision. Biden has given no medical or practical reason as to why he refuses to ask the humungous taxpayer-funded workforce under his supervision to appear regularly in the office. One theory floated by some conservative commentators is that the overwhelming majority of federal employees are progressively inclined and vote Democrat. With President Biden’s sinking poll numbers, he may want to avoid offending one of the few reliable bases he has left.

Regardless, some legislators refuse to wait for President Biden to take the initiative. Subcommittee on Government Operations Ranking Member Jody Hice (R-Ga.), has aggressively called on Inspectors General to “assess the impact of telework on federal agencies’ mission, employee performance, and service to the American people during the pandemic.” He further stated that “thanks to Operation Warp Speed, millions of Americans are safely returning to the workplace,” but that it is “clear that the unprecedented number of federal employees working remotely has significantly contributed to massive delays, inefficiencies, and declines in performance – all to the detriment of American taxpayers.”

The issue of the federal government’s return to the office arises as the reconciliation bill currently being debated in the Senate proposes adding thousands of new bureaucrats to agencies like the IRS and the Department of Labor. The Biden administration’s reasoning for these expansions is to assist in “enforcement activities” and to better help agencies meet their statutory missions. But a good first step in increasing the effectiveness of the federal bureaucracy, rather than making it even more bloated and expensive, might be to make sure the federal employees already on the payroll are actually doing their jobs.

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in D.C. at the intersection of politics and culture. 

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Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
2 years ago

Like to see more replaced by automation alone to cut labor costs.
& or merge depts, units by Niche can help IE ICE & USBP merge

Tom
Tom
2 years ago

Title of article sounds like an oxymoron.

JimH
JimH
2 years ago

Most government workers are probably working from their local golf course.

Rik
Rik
2 years ago

I’m jealous, if I tried working from home I doubt, no I know that I would not get a paycheck! . . . Forget it, i’d have to swallow my pride if I ever worked for Jackass Joe and I know I could never do it! . . . I could never call anyone “Comrade” with a straight face without sneering first!

oren
oren
2 years ago

You mean they aren’t working??? I didn’t see the difference!!!

Art
Art
2 years ago

SORRY TO BE REDUNDANT! WORK? SOUNDS LIKE MAYNARD G. KREBS ON DOBEY GILLIS.
THEY WEREN’T “WORKING”? WHO KNEW? YOU GOTTA LOVE THOSE GOV’T JOBS. HIS FOR 30 YEARS AND COME OUT AND GET YOUR FULLY FUNDED AND TAXPAYER PAID RETIREMENT. THIS IS USUALLY A FULL PAYCHECK PLUS THEIR “EARNED RETIREMENT” AND MEDICAL INSURANCE. WE ARE SUCKERS AND MAYBE JEALOUS.

Catherine
Catherine
2 years ago

I have recently lost my husband and trying to get all of his paper work in order is daunting. He was a federal employee and it will take me up to six months for a response to his pension. Social security was another mess all together they will not meet you face to face. It is all done over the phone, so no facial ques or empathy only lip service.
Our government needs to be cleaned out and the power needs to be returned to the citizens as it should be.

Catherine

George
George
2 years ago

I’ll wager that productivity is not normal for those workers staying at home. I’ll bet they are not working as much as they “work” at their government jobs when present in an office. Talk about free money.

Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
2 years ago

Everybody that voted for Biden should have to readthis article. Kyle L.

PaulE
PaulE
2 years ago

LOL!!! When the author wrote “But a good first step in increasing the effectiveness of the federal bureaucracy, rather than making it even more bloated and expensive, might be to make sure the federal employees already on the payroll are actually doing their jobs.” I had to laugh. Has anybody out there noticed any difference in how things are running or not running from a federal government perspective? Seriously. You could do away with half the federal government tomorrow and I would bet you 99 percent of Americans wouldn’t see any difference. The reality is the federal bureaucracy has grown in size and scope over the decades to simply perpetuate the bureaucracy itself. Words like efficiency or effectiveness are never uttered in Washington.

anna hubert
anna hubert
2 years ago

Productivity and effectiveness? Throw in efficiency and the joke will kill me

Veteran
Veteran
2 years ago

Time to bring back an old but sad joke: “The Army has a new experimental hypersonic missile, it’s named the “Civil Servant” because it doesn’t work, and you can’t fire it.
Federal government service also needs term limits, just like our politicians. Four years is enough, we’ve tried the old way long enough with civil servants’ unions, pensions, unprecedented health care, and one month of paid leave annually plus holidays, which has bred complacency, unproductivity, ineffectiveness, and inefficiency, combined with ignorance, and apathy. Their motto seems to be the difference between the meaning of the difference of ignorance, and apathy “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
One four year term without benefits and regular terms of vacation as in the economy, after that all civil servants should be required to go back out into the economy to get a real job. One, and done. Anything past four years these days breeds little unelected bureaucrat politicians, power hungry for surveillance, and control, and unresponsive to the people who pay them.

Tim Toroian
Tim Toroian
2 years ago

If we keep experiencing new variants every few months, no. I think we are not done with them.

tempest
tempest
2 years ago

As a contractor I have worked side by side with “federal workers”- even when they are “at work” it is hard to get them “to actually work!”

Hal
Hal
2 years ago

As the Biden Comedy/Communistic Presidency rolls along, it is very difficult to look ahead and think you can spot anything that is not negative in the future.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen
2 years ago

As they watch porn and play vid games. My first impression of DC, in 2007, was a frightening feeling when I saw ALL those buildings. To do WHAT ? At least 80% of all this garbage needs to be abolished. Let’s create MASSIVE unemployment in DC. Disgusting and wasteful.

Stuart J Somerville
Stuart J Somerville
2 years ago

Back to work, how about start to work!

David
David
2 years ago

My opinion, about eighty percent of government/taxpayer paid employees are totally useless. That means that if we have to deal with any government agency, we have a twenty percent chance of dealing with someone, that you are paying their salary, that knows what they are doing and can help you. To some it up we would be better off by firing the useless eighty percent, shrinking the entire taxpayer paid non-workforce and save billions of dollars of taxes. All of this is caused by the big government democrats = degressive, divisive, liars, corrupt/criminal, useless, godless, BABY KILLERS, fruits and nuts that don’t know which restroom to use, radical socialist/communist/marxists craving total absolute raw POWER to CONTROL everybody and everything to ENRICH themselves and FORCE their evil reprobate ANTI-CHRISTIAN lifestyle agenda on children and society. Yes, the USA is divided, good will not unite with evil and right will not unite with wrong!


LouiseR
LouiseR
2 years ago

The headline is misleading. Federal workers have been working from home, but this suggests they are not working at all, which is false (despite all these ignorant comments to the contrary.) It should read, “[…] finally go back to the office.” The answer might be no. Many of us are not going back to the office. But the shakeup of the office work culture is not confined to federal workers. Entire industries are re-thinking the office paradigm. This could be a big problem for the commercial real estate industry, as millions of sq ft of commercial office space goes vacant over the coming years. As for whether or not federal workers work, it depends on your perspective. Federal workers DO work, as much as anyone else does, more or less. In all industries some people work harder than others. As for the feds, they are working, but their missions may not align with your values, depending on what you value. If you like national parks, maybe you like the people who work there. If you are polluting a waterway with a CAFO, maybe you don’t. If you hate paying taxes, you may not like the people who work at the IRS. If you fly airplanes, maybe you think the FAA is important. Do you want permission for a pipeline, maybe FERC is your friend, maybe not. If you think our public schools suck, you may not like the Dept of Education. But none of these opinions have anything to do with the actual work being done by actual people. There are millions of feds who report to work every day, like everyone else, and some of them earn their pay and some don’t, just like everywhere.

William
William
2 years ago

I tried to hand deliver some paperwork to the local social security office. They wouldn’t even accept it when the guard opened the door to tell me I had to mail it. I walked a couple of blocks to the P.O. to mail it. It routed out of the state (since the mail is no longer handled locally) and returned several hundred feet down the street to the S.S. office. Someone owes me some carbon credits!

Philip Hammersley
Philip Hammersley
2 years ago

Dr. “Falsie” and his crew and the dictatorial governors have cheated millions of students out of a whole year’s education. Only a few students (very dedicated) can learn as much online as in person!

Phillip Ridenour
Phillip Ridenour
2 years ago

My daughter and her husband are both federal employees working from home. It seems that in so doing they are both saving themselves money by not commuting, and saving the government money by not using electricity in the empty office building. However, my daughter’s supervisor just threw away some $100K remodeling and refurnishing said empty office, instead of hiring more staff to handle their heavy caseload. Uncle Sam giveth and Uncle Sam taketh away. SMH.

Judith Davis
Judith Davis
2 years ago

Love to see the Federal Government work, period!!!

MariaRose
MariaRose
2 years ago

No putdown on jobs that can be worked from home, what I am going to address is the lack of efficiency which causes the “need” for a large number of federal workers in their guaranteed jobs. Unlike jobs in the regular corporate world where performance determines pay rate and continuance of employment, federal workers, once classified as a “regular” employee over a substitute/temp worker can NOT be fired/laid off/lose pay. Yeah, when the government has a shutdown, they may have a stoppage in paychecks but they will still Eventually get paid for all the time/days of the shutdown, plus they will not put any more effort into working faster to catch up. Why do you think IRS had to delay everything because of the government shutdown, which was deliberately timed to coincide with planned vacation time? We don’t need more government workers we just need more efficient government workers. Why do you think USPS had to slowdown delivery rates–it had to do with how “fast/slow” the workers are. Plus all these government workers have powerful unions whose contracts cover this.

Papa Doug
Papa Doug
2 years ago

Will Republicans retake both houses and return sanity to America? ONLY if we stop fraudulent voting!

William L Skinner, Sr
William L Skinner, Sr
2 years ago

Easy to solve. Stop the pay checks until they report back to work. (Would probably cause a series of auto crashes driving so fast to get back to work.)

Victoria Johnson
Victoria Johnson
2 years ago

Many, particularly the elderly, are not proficient in conducting business over the internet. You can’t get immediate answers to questions and the thread of the inquiry is lost in the delay when using the mail. Many elderly also have diminished hearing and don’t ‘hear’ or understand every word said over a telephone line even if (or because) they use hearing aids.

I, for one, will go out of my way to have a face to face meeting for any serious matter such as Social Security or IRS. In Reno, they’ve completely closed the IRS office to the public, whom they are supposed to be serving.

Edward
Edward
2 years ago

Dont count on it.

BAE
BAE
2 years ago

Does the federal government work or just take and spend the tax payers money? No work, no paycheck, then they’ll return to work.

Hal
Hal
2 years ago

Just “e pluribus unum” on the latest publicized Joe Hidin’ Biden foul up. Biden continues to widen his sidin’ with ineptitude. It really bothers me that Joe Hidin’ Biden continues to foul up everything he gets involved with. Much of his actions are simply dumb. And the Democraps are quietly hay for themselves while the heat focuses on Joe Hidin’ Biden. But do not be naive .., the Democraps are working hard to set up rigging for the next election cyclel.

C Murphy
C Murphy
2 years ago

Unbelievable! Again government is raping the people they were hired to help. Thnx Joe.

Kate
Kate
2 years ago

I wouldn’t even worry yet. Before midterm elections Biden will be gone and Kamalhair will be running the show. Nancy has it all planned!

Charlie Collins
Charlie Collins
2 years ago

First off biden didn’t take office until 202

Charlie Collins
Charlie Collins
2 years ago

First off Biden didn’t take office until 2021

Matt Knighton
Matt Knighton
2 years ago

It’s absolute foolishness for any human being to suggest, claim, or promise that they have the ability to end a global pandemic. The only thing that is more foolish is about 75 million people (give or take) believing it.

The idiocy of it all is tantamount to someone attempting to do what only one Man in history has ever done: command the wind and the waves to cease, resulting in nature’s instant obedience.

Biden’s campaign promise was much more than a lie. It was a revelation of his true character: a complete and utter fool. Such is the sad condition of our country’s leadership.

As a citizen of our great country, I’m not sure if I should pray, “God bless us,” or “God help us!”

Chris Barnes
Chris Barnes
2 years ago

This administration is a joke

Jimmy
Jimmy
2 years ago

Coming to you half dead Potato Head himself and his ship of growing fools.

GTPatriot
GTPatriot
2 years ago

These are the highest paid “workers” in the US ( not America). Huge salaries and monstrous
retirement benes. Every new fed program requires hundreds of thousands of fed employees
to monitor and enforce it. Perhaps we will all soon be working for the fed. Happy days. Right ?
Wait a minute: Who will pay the bill ? China, you fool. Until they decide to pull the plug and take
over the country without firing a shot. Gee. We are such geniuses.

GTPatriot
GTPatriot
2 years ago

Pile on top of this the millions of teachers who haven’t worked in over a year but are still paid.
Along with the dems they run our country. How can I get a gig like this ?

Karen
Karen
2 years ago

Sure hoping that this whole bucket of garbage comes to a final end. Also hope that the Reps are doing a lot more than what we hear to make this administration disappear.

Dr. Gorka and MAGA hat
pennsylvania flag in wind
joe biden with border patrol agents in mexico
tim walz

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