Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose