More Federal Workers are Telecommuting

An anonymous reader writes "Boosting the ranks of federal employees who telework is a slow, sometimes painful process, despite numerous incentives and legislative edicts lobbed at U.S. agencies over the years. Take the situation at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which last month was ordered by a federal arbitration panel to allow its legal instrument examiners to telework on a pilot basis. ATF was against letting these specialists telework because it says the material they need to remove from agency offices in order to telework posed a security risk. The Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) became involved at the request of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which successfully argued its case for allowing the examiners to telework on a pilot basis."

Comments

Re:Not surprising

[The One and Only]

I know you're trying to make a funny, but it's more accurate to say that the President lives in a house with an attached office building than to say he works from home. As for Crawford, the government spends millions not only making it usable as a "Western White House", but also making sure the President isn't assassinated whenever he goes there.

Then again, Jefferson did more work in Monticello than he did in the White House. He was perhaps the original telecommuter, not to mention the inventor of the swivel chair and the man primarily responsible for eliminating the stigma of tomatoes in America.

Re:Um...

[moosesocks]

They've been around since the 1970s, and appear to be a "disinterested 3rd party" that mediates disputes between federal agencies and the unions which have reached an impasse.

They're part of the FLRA, which is the larger body that is an umbrella organization for dealing with labor issues within the federal government.

It's not particularly surprising that such a body exists. I'd be more surprised if it didn't.