Federal workers who telework one day a week could lose locality pay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just tired of being hated on. Like so insulted. members get served by Feds in so many ways they don’t even know yet they all are lt hate us all.

Agreed. Teleworking also allows me flexibility to provide better service because I can schedule phone calls with people outside of business hours in my time zone.

You can just ask the people I've helped. I'm proud of what I have accomplished.

+1. Plus I end up working more because I am not commuting. There is not a single study showing a drop in productivity due to feds teleworking.

But also joke’s on them— because of pay compression losing DC locality pay would hardly touch my salary.

There are some loafers who don't work during telework and they should be getting rid of them first.

Totally agree but guess what, making those people show up in the office isn’t going to make them be more productive

NP, those loafers would be the first to not show up in the office. I know for a fact that this is true. Many don't have childcare or a way to come back to the office and would quit. I even know people who have put off retirement to loaf while they telework. Others of us are very productive teleworking. The thing is, managers don't have the ability to effectively manage telework. It's not like the private sector where you can just fire people for not working. It takes about a year of nonstop documentation that someone isn't working to fire them, and usually during that time the person starts magically working harder. And then when you back off tracking them, they go back to not working. It's a vicious cycle for managers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They really hate us!

Federal employees who telework at least once a week would lose locality pay under a new House bill. Under the Federal Employee Return to Work Act, teleworking employees would receive "Rest of U.S." locality pay even if they live and work in a region with a higher cost of living. Rep. Dan Newhouse introduced the bill. He and Sen. Bill Cassidy led the bill during the last session of Congress.
(Newhouse leads legislation to send federal employees back to work - Rep. Dan Newhouse)

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-newscast/2025/01/federal-workers-who-telework-one-day-a-week-could-lose-locality-pay/

I will read the rest of the thread later, but yes, I hate you. I am one of your neighbors who moved not too long ago. I find government workers to be insufferable in their self importance. I hope he finds a way to downsize government and get rid of the bloat, and this is plenty, we all now that, including you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They really hate us!

Federal employees who telework at least once a week would lose locality pay under a new House bill. Under the Federal Employee Return to Work Act, teleworking employees would receive "Rest of U.S." locality pay even if they live and work in a region with a higher cost of living. Rep. Dan Newhouse introduced the bill. He and Sen. Bill Cassidy led the bill during the last session of Congress.
(Newhouse leads legislation to send federal employees back to work - Rep. Dan Newhouse)

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-newscast/2025/01/federal-workers-who-telework-one-day-a-week-could-lose-locality-pay/

I will read the rest of the thread later, but yes, I hate you. I am one of your neighbors who moved not too long ago. I find government workers to be insufferable in their self importance. I hope he finds a way to downsize government and get rid of the bloat, and this is plenty, we all now that, including you.

What does this even mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you rather loose locality pay to be able to telework at least one day a week or rather keep locality pay and return to work 5 days a week?

I'd personally go in, because, no joke, the difference is 30k but 90% of my agency is not DC area, we're all 50 states. We hired hundreds of people entirely remotely.

this is what makes me laugh. my DH is a FED, we live in DC and less than 10 miles from his agency (15-20 min by car), he was doing some remote work already before covid (like 2 days week) and totally remote since 2020. we could not care less if he has to go back, he will. But people who were hired from red states far away, they are going to be screwed. some GOP rants about moving feds out of DC and dont realize the easier way is for jobs that can be remote to be remote so people from anywhere can be hired. so this is screwing the people from the very states these GOP reprs and senators are from. and I dont even mention that my DH's agency, in the middle of nowhere MD, does not have space and parking space for the number of employees so if everybody is 100% back in the office there is an issue where people are going to sit and how they get there if they cannot park anywhere. but hey, while the billionaires screw the country and increase the debt to unsustainable levels damaging everybody, the GOP needs some scapegoats to channel people's rage and as immigrants, trans, Muslims, the welfare queens may not be enough, they need to throw in the feds too, spending their time taking bubble baths and working 1-2 hours a day for a lavish amount of money funded by hardworking middle America that struggle from pay check to paycheck while working on site 12hr a day (cit. Joni Ernst)

Most of the feds are living in cheap 1 hour away areas like pg county

Yup. You try supporting a family on 100k with a reasonable commute to DC, if you didn't buy a house 10 years ago. Parts of PG county are pretty close in, but lots of us live places like Frederick, Woodbridge, Fredericksburg, etc. Telework helped us balance relatively low salaries (most feds aren't lawyers at the SEC) with, you know, having a life. It's even harder to move close on a fed salary than it was before covid.

I am sick about hearing that you get paid so little, sick to death of it. So what! Get a second job to increase your quality of life and stop sponging off of taxpayers with your continuous whining about the sacrifices you make for us. I hope they take your pensions away too.

[Anonymous]

I’d love this. I have gone in a sum total of one day since COVID— to clean out my office when we gave up our leased space and get my new PIV card. I’m teleworking 5 days a week and have Ben since 3/2020. But, my ODS is not my home. And, I was 60% telework pre-COVID. My OFS, which I have literally never seen is in DC— and the building has enough room non-BU- employees— basically, managers— to hotel twice a week. If I lose power or internet and can’t work from home, my manager has to see if there is room for me to come into our building that day. If there is, I get two hours of Admin time to drive in, or can take leave. If the building is full, I just get Admin leave for the day because there is nowhere to put me. (I do have sensitive conversations involving PII and PHI— and work in our extra bedroom with the door closed unless the house is empty, before anyone starts).

We gave up two full buildings in one DMV location and three floors in another large building in the DMV between 2021 and 2023 when leases expired. And we all have our assigned ODS as the one small building they retained that can’t even hold our managers 3 days a week on a hotel if basis. They are literally thousands of seats short of bringing us back. And our CBA extends current telework levels until 2029. So, good luck with that.

Nevertheless, I’m required to live within 50 miles of my ODS in downtown DC, even though I have never worked from (or even set foot in) the building. I would absolutely take the pay cut if they would remove the live within 50 miles of DC provision and make me full remote. My last kid is a senior in college. My DH is full remote and could work from anywhere. And we have aging parents we’d like to be near, who live in a much lower COL area. We also about 800k in equity in our home. Given that we’d downsize to a retirement sized home, with decent office home space, we could probably just buy all cash and lose the mortgage payment. Which is more that my salary would be cut.

The only thing keeping us in the DMV right now is the requirement that I give within 50 miles of my office. And with telework up in the air, we want to move, but are frozen in place waiting to see what the permanent decision is. And we have been waiting for a permanent decision for two years. If my DC ODS goes away, we’d move within a year to a lower COL, even if we could retain the higher COL by staying in the DMV. It would be a win-win.

But, DOGE would need to admit we are not going back in person. and remove our DC office as my ODS, and make full remote official. But, I’m praying they do. With kids and VA state colleges out of the equation, and elderly parents needing more help, I’ll take the pay cut and move to a sunnier, less hectic, less expensive area where we can lose out mortgage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still no solution to address the fact that agencies do not have space for all of their employees. Many agencies gave up leased private office space and transitioned their employees to new space with limited time in the office. They cannot fit all of their employees in their offices at one time. The whole model is based on the idea that some employees work remotely.

You’re presuming that employees all deserve offices. I’m sure they’d be happy for you to be sharing offices and sitting on chairs in hallways.

Nope; but I am presuming that everyone gets a desk. My agency does not have enough space for every employee to be sitting at the office at the same time.

I worked for a local gov once that had 6 attorneys in a conference room with a couple sharing two sides of a desk. Don’t underestimate how bad conditions can be!

Our agency already has two feds sharing a cubicle, which is one reason we telework!

+1, lots of feds already share offices, have workstations in hallways, require contractors to be remote to save space. We're talking about exceeding the legal capacity of the building if everyone is in every day.

If this passes just call the fire marshall each day to report violations.

Fire marshals only have power to the extent the feds let them. Likewise, GSA regulations and rules are not laws; they can easily be changed through rule making

You don’t know how local vs fed conflicts of laws works. You also don’t know what rules and regulations are.

Federal always wins the conflict on federal property. The GSA regulations concerning occupancy are regulations. Regulations can be changed via rule making

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you rather loose locality pay to be able to telework at least one day a week or rather keep locality pay and return to work 5 days a week?

I'd personally go in, because, no joke, the difference is 30k but 90% of my agency is not DC area, we're all 50 states. We hired hundreds of people entirely remotely.

this is what makes me laugh. my DH is a FED, we live in DC and less than 10 miles from his agency (15-20 min by car), he was doing some remote work already before covid (like 2 days week) and totally remote since 2020. we could not care less if he has to go back, he will. But people who were hired from red states far away, they are going to be screwed. some GOP rants about moving feds out of DC and dont realize the easier way is for jobs that can be remote to be remote so people from anywhere can be hired. so this is screwing the people from the very states these GOP reprs and senators are from. and I dont even mention that my DH's agency, in the middle of nowhere MD, does not have space and parking space for the number of employees so if everybody is 100% back in the office there is an issue where people are going to sit and how they get there if they cannot park anywhere. but hey, while the billionaires screw the country and increase the debt to unsustainable levels damaging everybody, the GOP needs some scapegoats to channel people's rage and as immigrants, trans, Muslims, the welfare queens may not be enough, they need to throw in the feds too, spending their time taking bubble baths and working 1-2 hours a day for a lavish amount of money funded by hardworking middle America that struggle from pay check to paycheck while working on site 12hr a day (cit. Joni Ernst)

Most of the feds are living in cheap 1 hour away areas like pg county

Yup. You try supporting a family on 100k with a reasonable commute to DC, if you didn't buy a house 10 years ago. Parts of PG county are pretty close in, but lots of us live places like Frederick, Woodbridge, Fredericksburg, etc. Telework helped us balance relatively low salaries (most feds aren't lawyers at the SEC) with, you know, having a life. It's even harder to move close on a fed salary than it was before covid.

I am sick about hearing that you get paid so little, sick to death of it. So what! Get a second job to increase your quality of life and stop sponging off of taxpayers with your continuous whining about the sacrifices you make for us. I hope they take your pensions away too.

What do you do for a living?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just tired of being hated on. Like so insulted. members get served by Feds in so many ways they don’t even know yet they all are lt hate us all.

Agreed. Teleworking also allows me flexibility to provide better service because I can schedule phone calls with people outside of business hours in my time zone.

You can just ask the people I've helped. I'm proud of what I have accomplished.

+1. Plus I end up working more because I am not commuting. There is not a single study showing a drop in productivity due to feds teleworking.

But also joke’s on them— because of pay compression losing DC locality pay would hardly touch my salary.

There are some loafers who don't work during telework and they should be getting rid of them first.

Totally agree but guess what, making those people show up in the office isn’t going to make them be more productive

NP, those loafers would be the first to not show up in the office. I know for a fact that this is true. Many don't have childcare or a way to come back to the office and would quit. I even know people who have put off retirement to loaf while they telework. Others of us are very productive teleworking. The thing is, managers don't have the ability to effectively manage telework. It's not like the private sector where you can just fire people for not working. It takes about a year of nonstop documentation that someone isn't working to fire them, and usually during that time the person starts magically working harder. And then when you back off tracking them, they go back to not working. It's a vicious cycle for managers.

Good managers handle this just fine. Sounds like you have a bad manager (or you are one). Managing people is a full time job that involves setting goals, finding out if goals are met, meeting regularly with staff - you don't "back off" that, because it's the whole job.

Most of us have also worked in the private sector and it's not significantly easier to fire people there. Both require documentation in practice, even if not in law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

YEP. I honestly do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

YEP. I honestly do.

But if their job site was in Loudoun county they would still be entitled to DC locality pay, so why should it matter if they are working there or DC??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

YEP. I honestly do.

But if their job site was in Loudoun county they would still be entitled to DC locality pay, so why should it matter if they are working there or DC??

Because this person's only motivation is to hurt feds. They've bought into the propaganda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

YEP. I honestly do.

Why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

YEP. I honestly do.

But if their job site was in Loudoun county they would still be entitled to DC locality pay, so why should it matter if they are working there or DC??

Because this person's only motivation is to hurt feds. They've bought into the propaganda.

And apparently lack critical thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As they should. Look up the definition of locality pay.

Are you being dense on purpose?

You honestly believe that someone who lives in Ashburn, VA, should lose their locality pay if they choose to work ONE day a week from home?

YEP. I honestly do.

Do you have this disdain for private sector employees who work from home 1 day per week? Or do you just have some unfathomable hatred of Feds because you’re dumb enough to be manipulated by some billionaires and politicians who have a financial or personal incentive to make you hate Feds.

How do you feel about my private sector DH who is 95% telework, but makes DC level pay? Does that make you mad too, or no because he’s not a fed? I’m guessing your animosity is only toward feds because you’re too incompetent to realize you’re totally being played by the GOP media.