Reply to Decentralization of fed govt begins: HHS employees eligible for permanent remote work

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Decentralization of fed govt begins: HHS employees eligible for permanent remote work"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Before we talk about a mass exodus, read the agreement carefully.

The condition for granting remote work is "The employee’s duties require less than 16 hours per bi-weekly pay period at the agency worksite."

And you know who gets to decide that?  Management.  There is nothing in there about clear criteria for when "duties require."

I think maybe wait and see how many people actually get approved. [/quote]

Eh.  For HHS, who needs to go to the worksite except for people in a lab? They're office jobs. [/quote]

I'm not taking a position on what jobs require onsite presence.  I'm just pointing out that management has full discretion to make the call. And we know that MANY organizations have decided that "office jobs" still require a certain amount of onsite presence.

I wouldn't expect the floodgates to open based on this union agreement.[/quote]
NIH is a lot different than most federal agencies, because it relies on a lot of people with PhDs who may also have spouses with PhDs. This opens up the potential for them to hire and retain highly qualified people who do highly technical work that mostly involves solitary analytical work and report writing who may otherwise be constrained to apply for and/or work at NIH because perhaps their spouse is pursuing a teaching career at UC Berkeley or something. NIH has always had looser barriers to employment and engagement with academic and industry than other agencies. I can see a lot of NIH technical employees leave the area as a result, which would create a further drag on the county’s small biotech sector. The Bay Area, Seattle, and Boston are poised to benefit.[/quote]

I could see some folks leaving because of two body problems, but just like you pointed out, the places these people might want to move are almost never places that are cheaper than the DMV.

PhDs don't, as a rule, want to be out in the country. They want to be around other PhDs. Ask anyone who works at a rural university how much harder they have to work to recruit good candidates.[/quote]
It’s not just the two body problem. They would also certainly prefer to be in larger biotech job centers as it would facilitate better career growth. Montgomery County does not have a research university. Montgomery County does not have physical presence of many large pharma/biotech firms. I think the only real research hospital is NIH. The locations of all of these things have been intentionally dispersed throughout the county, including Gaithersburg, Rockville and now east County, instead of centralized around the NIH and Bethesda so there are no strong agglomeration effects. I think it will be a real problem.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics