CDC employees losing RA telework

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I will say that it was horrible for me losing telework, but I didn't think it was fair that coworkers got RAs approved for made up reasons. I know that RAs are often legitimate, but the ones I saw and know personally (I am in the approval chain for these) were bogus. Anxiety and back pain from a long commute were popular.

I don't get this argument at all. The claims either meet the standard for an RA or they don't. If the HR people aren't doing their jobs and properly vetting claims the answer is they should be disciplined or trained better, not remove the RA from everyone.

But what is an appropriate RA? I have a few disabled coworkers who were in electric wheelchairs and they worked in person with me for 15 years. We even put in van accessible parking spots just for them.

Maybe immunocompromised in an RA?

Yes, and various autoimmune disorders, and people under going cancer treatment for example. They can still work, but it might be deadly to come into the office and catch flu or Covid.

Treatment for cancer isn’t permanent. They should and do get a temporary RA. I know several people with autoimmune diseases that work in person. A few are teachers.

NP - The fact that you know several people with autoimmune diseases who work in-person is irrelevant. It depends on the specific autoimmune disease and the specific person.

Moreover, some cancers are incurable, but treatable, i.e., people are on treatments for the rest of their lives to keep the cancer at bay. In many of those instances, the treatments are immunosuppressive. So, yes, for people who are on those kinds of cancer treatments and are severely immunocompromised as a result, full-time telework is a very appropriate RA.

Or providing a respirator or maybe a private office.

Why would you twist yourself into pretzels to defend making this person come in to the office. Ghoul.

Exactly. Only a beast would twist themselves into a pretzel to make someone literally sick but still effective come into the office, especially just to jump on Teams calls all day. 🙄

Sorry but they weren’t just as effective at home as they were at work. Maybe some were but not most.

How exactly does sitting in traffic or on a crowded train (catching the flu) an hour each way just to jump on Teams calls effective? What is your definition of effective?

Sorry your agency sucks. Ours has in person meetings now.

I'm not sure how someone's commute plays into what they do at work at all.

I do not think remote work will ever come back, but I have hopes that telework will return. One day a week or a day a payperiod (what we had before) would be a huge boon.

Nearly all of our meetings are still Teams. This is because most of our meetings are between employees in several different offices around the country. Even when everybody is in the same building, we still often use Teams just because we're all swamped and booked back to back and it's easier and quicker to do Teams than to reserve a room and have everybody assemble there.

RTO has also made it significantly harder to schedule meetings across time zones now, since people are much less flexible about calls outside their set working hours due to having to commute.

[Anonymous]

I read that CDC has paused this approach.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/09/union-urges-reversal-of-cdc-suspension-on-approving-telework-for-employees-with-disabilities/

[Anonymous]

There was an article in the WSJ yesterday about RTO being unsuccessful.

Government is always behind the curve. Everyone will be back to TW in a year or two.

Remember when most people had realized how stupid and pointless covid masking was, but we all went along with it? RTO is like that. Pretty much everyone acknowledges that RTO doesn’t make sense but we are in the phase of going along with it. Managers across firms and organizations will tell you to your face how dumb this is but we are doing it because…we don’t know? Eventually something happens and normalcy returns.

Management is short sighted and thinks this terrible job market will continue forever. Except it won’t and there is no guarantee this AI takeover will destroy jobs like the AI leaders suggest. Usually what the average person expects doesn’t happen. Most likely new jobs and industries spring up and the companies with expensive real estate filled with workers on laptops who hate management will struggle. Already at my company there is acknowledgment that RTO pushed the top performers to job search and we lost a lot of talent.