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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, that seems fair.

No it’s stupid. My home and office are both in the DC area— why would I lose locality pay for working from home?

I don’t see any chance this happens— it’s just more crap from the morons.

Well, majority of remote employees in my agency are local remote, since there was not remote policy before covid. Now they are hiring remote employees across the country.

I am local remote worker too, but if that is the only way to keep remote status, I don't mind taking pay cut (rest of US locality rate), which is around 12% pay cut in another post. I would consider pay cut as using money to exchange extra benefit, I don't mind they pay remote/teleworking/5 days in office employees differently. Otherwise, people working in office may feel unfair.

Anyway, as long as they don't cancel remote policy, I am okay to take a pay cut, if that is the only way to keep remote status.

[Anonymous]

I think remote workers should lose locality pay. I actually think most remote workers would still be happy with it. A 30% cut but you don’t have to be in the office is appealing.

A lot of localities are higher than DC’s or similar. Even Denver has a high locality and that’s where most feds are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or they could release some of the leased office space (and maybe lease out some of the federally owned buildings) and save some money. There is a federal office across the street from us that they spent about a decade renovating — it reopened years before the pandemic and I’ve never seen anyone going in or out or working there. Maybe doge could look into that?

What’s the current system with full remote workers though? If you are technically out of a dc office do you get dc locality pay? I know at least some business that pay alll their fully remote workers on their midwestern salary scale.

You’re supposed to get paid based on where you live, since your home is your office. (That said, when they switched DH from telework to remote, they never adjusted for some reason even though he made it clear he went remote at our address… our locality is only a difference of like 3k though).

He may want to fix that. I had a few colleagues who had their salary screwed up after annual promotions— completely HR’s fault. It was small enough that they didn’t notice. They only found out when they were informed that they owed the difference, plus interest, and were chastised/warned for not noticing and fixing it immediately. It was pretty messed up.

I know people whom this happened to as well. This is going to be a problem for him.

I’ve actually seen IG investigations over this and the amount differences weren’t big. Once he knew he needed to pay it back.

[Anonymous]

This is a pay cut plus a bonus for coming to the office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LOL!!! Right because someone that teleworks ONCE per week is doing so from Texas.

Did you miss the "at least" part. I have colleagues who are full time teleworkers and live in Texas.

This would hit feds outside of the DMV significantly more.

Not PP, but I think the point is that if it is really targeted at people who do not live in the DMV, then the threshold should be higher than "at least" once per week.

And the people who DO live in the DMV and telework one day per work would be hit a lot harder because they are incurring DC locality expenses, while somebody in rural TX has just been benefitting from something they aren't entitled to.

Wait, I didn’t think fully remote workers got locality pay? My agency is based in DC but we have remote workers all over. My understanding is you get paid based on where you live, not where your headquarters are.

That is how it works which is why this bill is performative

Punitive not performative.

[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/

“For the last four years, D.C. bureaucrats have abused telework policies and exploited locality bonuses while our federal agencies’ buildings sit empty. This legislation is very clear; show up to where you are being paid to work so we can end this abuse of taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Newhouse.

We should have locality pay for Congress where they are paid based on their home state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LOL!!! Right because someone that teleworks ONCE per week is doing so from Texas.

Did you miss the "at least" part. I have colleagues who are full time teleworkers and live in Texas.

This would hit feds outside of the DMV significantly more.

Hope the Trumpets like what they voted for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there is a RTO 5 day a week mandate, then there should be no snow day telework.

There won't be snow day telework, or after hours work. And less will get done in person than at home, as was always the case, because of distractions + the new problems of seating everyone in less space.

That said, there could well be no snow days. Closing (vs unscheduled leave) is up to OPM.

I have been a DC fed for 30 years. There used to be far fewer snow days. It was basically only when metro said they would be closing the above ground stations (and I am not sure they have to do that anymore or maybe we just get less snow? "Liberal Leave" was the norm when schools were closed to help working parents. Maybe telework made it easier for OPM to close since many people were still working?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LOL!!! Right because someone that teleworks ONCE per week is doing so from Texas.

Even so, shouldn't the loss only be 20%of your locality pay if you're only teleworking once a week?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If there is a RTO 5 day a week mandate, then there should be no snow day telework.

Then drive in like everyone else. My office was 85% full on Monday snow day. Yeah we were a couple hours late but we were there.

[Anonymous]

This one is actually worse. I have not heard of it before. It would affect everyone earning over the base pay.

Locality Pay and Retirement

Senator Cassidy has also reintroduced the Federal Employee Locality Accountability in Retirement Act (S. 26). This bill would have a significant financial impact on federal employees’ retirement annuities.

The legislation would exclude locality pay when calculating retirement payments for federal employees enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). This would have the net effect of cutting federal retirement annuities because locality pay is included in the high-3 calculation.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

This would drive a lot of people out of my agency. We are already paid far below private sector, with the offset being the flexibility. We already take a pay cut for WFH. Cut it more and people will go make $50K+ higher elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

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.

My org was mostly remote (like over 80%) before COVID and they were still out of space. Those of us who were eligible for full telework but still in the office were asked why we didn't go home. They wanted us to go on telework.

Since COVID they're both hired a ton of new people remotely and given up the lease on multiple buildings.

[Anonymous]

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.