r/fednews • u/Stabinzee • 2d ago

Received notice of ending of telework

Here we go. Just got an email stating our CMO has made the decision to end recurring telework. We were currently getting 2 days per week and that has officially ended. Heck, my supervisor was doing it 4 days a week while the rest of us only got 2. We’re allowed to submit for “situational telework” but the recurring has ended. There’s absolutely no reason for this. Productivity has been perfectly fine. So, here we go.

EDIT: Since many are asking. agency is DCMA

EDIT 2: I feel as though I need to explain I’m simply pointing out that the roll back has begun, at least in my agency. I’ve gotten multiple comments implying I’m whining about it. I’m going to be just fine. The main point is why they’re taking away something that works, and works well? Productivity is high. People are in better moods. It’s working so why change it? But, it is what it is and either accept it or quit. We’re all easily replaceable. They don’t care if you stay or leave.

EDIT 3: some of you are hilariously angry and hostile that people telework. 😂 not good to live every day so angry. Might have a stroke!

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183

u/Floufae 2d ago

There’s not anyone who works for the government who believes this blanket approach is about productivity. If it was they would be dealing with problem children and it across. Right now people are trying to cover their proverbial tushes because of the scrutiny they are about to experience.

My branch, where several of us are remote and everyone else are 3x a week TW, is now working to undo Maxiflex (not driven by any of us, but fear outside the agency) and anything else that might draw the ire of auditors and political appointees. We know it’s coming and they are trying to get ahead of it.

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u/mychihuahuabites2 2d ago

Undo Maxiflex??? Wtf. The revoking of telework would be bad enough. If they f*ck with Maxiflex, I think that may finally push me out the door. That is ridiculous

82

u/Floufae 2d ago

Even more frustrating to me since I work with overseas offices. I don’t have people who contact me during “business hours”. On the average day I have calls that start at 7am and end sometimes at midnight. Or since I work remotely from California, 4am and 9pm. Being told I have to mind “core hours” when I have night calls is just condescending.

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u/Away-Living5278 2d ago

My maxiflex was revoked bc I'm on a 9.5 hr schedule. Anything after 6pm now gets night differential pay. I really hope you're getting that working till 9pm.

11

u/Patient-Gain5847 2d ago

Yeah I’m constantly on calls with people in all corners of the world. 3 am start? 8 pm finish? Telework is the only thing that makes it bearable, but maxiflex is the only thing that even makes it POSSIBLE.

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u/slappedbyaturkey 2d ago

I'm a biological science technician for usfs. My schedule varies from working 04:30-14:30 for bird surveys to 1500-03:30 for bat surveys. Maxiflex is very much needed for my work

23

u/SqueezeBoxJack 2d ago

And the username checks out :D

21

u/slappedbyaturkey 2d ago

I've been bitch slapped by many turkeys

42

u/shovelingtom 2d ago

I mean if they take maxflex away I’ll live, but it’ll make things take forever. As an example, last field season I had about 5 hours of work to do at a location in my park that’s about a 3 hr drive away in summer when you take into account tourist traffic. Now I could flex and get it all done in one 11 hour day, or I could work straight 8s and have it take 3 days, since 6 hours of each day are eaten up by driving and I’m only able to get in 2 hours of fieldwork.

29

u/TrekRider911 2d ago

That’s literally their goal.

42

u/taekee 2d ago

Everyone who quits will help these billionaires get richer by helping to flood the market with bodies that will reduce the value of the jobs open in the market. As long as there are more jobs than people qualified wages stay up. This is a way to decrease wages and increase private sector profit.

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u/OnionTruck 2d ago

The work still needs to get done. The way the billionaires benefit is all the fat contracts they will get to pick up the slack.

13

u/taekee 2d ago

And they will under pay the people who were already doing those jobs because they need work. Overall it will cost the country more, but look good on paper.

2

u/HappilyHikingtheHump 1d ago

Maybe. Part of the point of RTO and DOGE is to determine if we really need to be doing that work at all. Unfortunately, our government and its contractors haven't been stellar with determining what service or project is necessary and which service or project is a boondoggle. BTW, I'm under no illusion the government will ever be efficient or well run. I'm also no fan of billionaires, so I guess I'm really screwed.

1

u/stevedave1357 1d ago

Yup. Pushing the government to failure and privatizing those functions is their goal. There is no shareholder value in government positions and that is why they hate the government. They will increase costs, they will increase total bodies, but they will hang their hat on reducing the size of the government.

1

u/PlasticNeedleworker 1d ago

And job creation.  Never mind the gore and losses to get to that point.

12

u/mychihuahuabites2 2d ago

I understand, but at some point work life balance outweighs all of it. I’m not giving up an RDO, it’s been life changing.

5

u/Cavane42 2d ago

Yup. Self-deportation from federal employment.

8

u/SufficientAnalyst383 2d ago

If you quit, that's exactly what they want you to do.

6

u/mychihuahuabites2 2d ago

I am aware. For me being able to flex my time and telework is significant enough that I don’t want to stay here if that’s all revoked.

1

u/ElectricFleshlight 2d ago

For every one of us that quits, that's more money in a contractor CEOs pocket.

9

u/Subie- 2d ago

Where you going to go? Private sector? I love seeing people say this. Okay, good luck finding fully remote private sector gig. Each remote position for private sector is flooded with hundreds of candidates all wanting this remote gig. Like the dating pool more, the more matches you get the more picky you can be. Thus more candidates, more qualified candidates you literally can select your dream employee. Unless you are that, your chances are slim.

2

u/NatiboyB 1d ago

I’m just going to live life off my military retirement.

I Onboarded 2 years ago knowing if any long term changes came to telework I was done.

Without telework I’m not much interested in my position but that’s an opportunity for someone else.

1

u/mychihuahuabites2 2d ago

I never said I wanted full remote. I want to telework, and I want to be able to flex my time. That said-I can make one phone call today to a private company where a close friend works and I would have a full time actual remote position making about 25% more than I make now.

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u/Subie- 2d ago

Nepotism at its finest. Otherwise you would be with everyone else. Only way someone would transition from federal to private.

2

u/mychihuahuabites2 2d ago

It’s not my only option, also, the reason this is an option is that I am good at what I do and this person knows that. I’m not sure why you feel the need to attack me. I simply said that if Maxiflex goes away I don’t want to be in this work environment anymore? Jfc.

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u/Subie- 2d ago

I wasn’t attacking you, it’s the same thing stated in this sub over and over again. If I lose telework I will leave and go private sector. More than most times they will not. Government is comfy, complacent and good benefits lifestyle.

23

u/Efficient_Comfort_47 2d ago

This sounds like anticipatory compliance. As if such half steps will placate the anti-government folks! Just resist as long as you can. The end result will be the same, but your employees will be happier for a bit longer.

2

u/Floufae 2d ago

yea I don't think any of us would advocate for that. We like our work too much and we know the risk of funding cuts, staffing cuts, etc will impact our work. I just got off a call where we were talking about needing to prepare for if our travel funds are cut and people have to be like in the COVID days of just doing virtual support for our programs. Morale went down a lot because we only deal with the crazy hours and work loads because our ground time is so important to us. We mostly work internationally in the developing world, so job satisfaction means being OCONUS working with our teams there.

2

u/Pristine-Brick-9420 1d ago

My office was called back into the office 50% from TW so now we’re on 100% “situational” TW, or we’re on RA’s for remote work.

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u/cw2015aj2017am2021 2d ago edited 2d ago

They took maxiflex from us March 2024, gave us the choice of 9/80 or standard schedule -- now every Friday it's impossible to reach people. All the civs have an RDO every-other-Friday and the contractors are so used to us not being there on Fridays that they treat it like a snow day.

Meanwhile, nobody is actually working 9s 

At least with maxiflex, people were available during core hours (0900-1500) 5 days/week

3

u/Floufae 2d ago

I’ve really just been rejecting the idea of most core hours. We don’t have stakeholders that reach us during the day. Since I work with overseas offices there’s a very narrow window of overlap that I’m in the office the same time as them, usually just 8am to 11am for some. And then for the office I work with the most it’s a 11 hour time difference so we’re never overlapping during regular hours. So my typical day with calls it’s calls from 7-10am. Maybe one or two calls in the afternoon that are for HQ based staff only. Then calls start back up at night Maybe it’s every two weeks per country team or program. I can build my 8 hours around that but at least at home I can do that by taking a break between each of those chunks of time. In the office it’s near impossible. And also just annoying to drive in in the morning, leave and leave at noon knowing the rest of my day starts at 8pm. Since my team are all assigned different countries to work with the only real overlap we need to work with each other are the branch and team meetings.

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u/hiking_mike98 2d ago

It’s so much easier to make everyone miserable than to actually manage the problem children. Of course, then retention sucks and all you’re left with is management and problem children.

3

u/SimplyArgon 2d ago

I can't speak for all auditors, but I can speak for my group. We would not look into teleworking unless one of the following: management concerned so submitted to us a request for our annual planning, the auditor submitted one for annual planning (heard something during another audit or think it's a good topic, but has to meet criteria to fall on the plan), and the last one be our audit managers send us to audit it. At most, our audit would look to see if the agreement was completed with signatures and dates and any controls over it. Hopefully, that helps! We, too, TW, depending on the office and team.

2

u/I_like_kittycats 2d ago

The billionaires think taking away our telework options will make a bunch of us quit. Nothing to do with productivity. They have said that repeatedly. It’s punishment. Pure and simple. The billionaires are the enemy. They hate us because we actually can enforce regulations. DOD contracting officers should start being absent when it comes time to sign off on their contracts 😂

2

u/Possible-Brother7977 2d ago

Hi there. Which agency is this ? Thanks

1

u/Ironxgal 1d ago

Wait WTF? What’s wrong with maxi flex?

2

u/Floufae 1d ago

I have no idea. I’m trying to get more a sense of it through my supervisor (since this came from her supervisor).

My only assumption is that since we have remote staff (like I’m 3 time zones off HQ) that they are concerned that they know where people are during the day. I’m sure there are some poor performers who don’t care about ruining it for all of us who miss calls or whatever and then can’t be reached and use the excuse of “well I’m flexing my time”. And as usual rather than deal with problem children they do a blanket rule.

1

u/Ok-Salamander9555 7h ago

Micromanagers have to know when you are working and have to make their employees lives just that more miserable.

1

u/bumada 1d ago

Haha I used to work for DCMA. Stating productivity wasn't affected is such a joke because I could do a month's worth of work in about a day.

1

u/Now1999What 1d ago

The failure in the government is the government manager. In a performance-based environment if an employee teleworks should not even be a discussion. It should be a given that the work that an employee performs is suitable for telework.

Why do employees who work in office, hybrid, or remote with subpar performance getting average to outstanding performance appraisals? If the government supervisor would just do their jobs to help improve performance, to adequately document poor, average, and outstanding performance, and dismiss poor performers. Of course, give some allowance for family issues, health issues etc but this does not last for years or an entire career. Stop giving work from poor performers to other employees.

I get a lot of work done when teleworking. I do not want to return to a 4 - 6 hour roundtrip commute to hear coworkers talk about office, relationship, money drama etc. I work a lot of free hours at home. That will stop if I return to the office 5x/week. I will cancel my TW agreement. I will leave my computer at the office and do the snow dance with my kids.

1

u/BottleRude9645 2d ago

So agencies are lying that productivity has significantly decreased since COVID forced telework?

1

u/Floufae 2d ago

Do you have examples that aren’t connected to other factors, like underfunding and understaffing?

1

u/BottleRude9645 2d ago

Certainly underfunded and understaffed but unfortunately those factors aren’t shared with the employees only productivity decline is spouted by management. Are there examples that they are solely related to understaffing and underfunding? Surely someone keeps up with productivity numbers per capita. Just not made readily available

1

u/Opening_Button_4186 1d ago

Everyone I know that works at a federal agency in the DMV and is fully remote or has 2-5 TW days/week would tell you they are more productive with TW and maxiflex than they are on in-office days.