From: ^Human Resources Internal Communications <Human.Resources.Internal.Communications@ssa.gov>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2025 5:01 PM
Subject: Bargaining Unit Employees - Return to In-Person WorkA Message to All Employees
Subject: Bargaining Unit Employees - Return to In-Person Work
On Monday, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum (PM) requiring all employees to return to work in-person full time. This message serves as your official notice that your telework agreement will be suspended effective March 16, 2025, with all employees expected to return to work in-person full time on March 17, 2025.
The Office of Personnel Management Guidance on exempting military spouses from agency return to work plans only applies to employees who are homestationed (i.e., are working from their residence under an approved homestationing agreement). For that reason, employees who are military spouses with existing telework agreements must also report onsite to their official duty station full time beginning March 17, 2025. Employees must return any agency equipment taken to their telework location to their SSA office location. Employees who have signed up for VSIP are exempted.
Reminder: As shared in the March 3, 2025 Non-bargaining Unit Employees - Return to In-Person Work and Cancellation of Expanded Flexible Bands HRIC, the Office of Human Resources will send more on placement of employees with homestationing agreements into onsite official duty stations in the near future. Employees with homestationing agreements should continue to hold for further guidance.
The return to work in-person does not currently apply to employees under approved reasonable accommodations (RA) authorizing telework, temporary work at home by exception (WAHBE) agreements for medical reasons, or temporary compassionate assignments (TCA). In addition, employees in the Office of Hearings Operations and Office of Financial Policy and Program Integrity may remain in their current telework posture.
If your location has a space limitation issue, your supervisor will notify you to provide the next steps. As a reminder, any episodic telework is granted on a case-by-case basis and only in situations where the requested telework will benefit the agency.
Any expanded flexible bands are cancelled as of March 17, 2025 as well. Employees must follow the flexbands in agency policy (see Personnel Policy Manual S610_3) or their collective bargaining agreements.
We understand that this transition will require an adjustment to employee work/life arrangements. Supervisors should be liberal with the approval of leave over the next 4 weeks to accommodate the changes. We encourage employees to review the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) the agency has prepared on return to office topics. The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is also available to you using Access Code: ssaeap or 1-877-549-9528.
51 comments:
Nope… nope.. nope.. next question.
I suppose the children running the agency nowadays think this is legal because they used the word “suspended” instead of “cancelled.” Might work on one of the caveman lawyers Trump appointed to the bench, but I doubt any judge with an IQ above 75 is going to buy this shiz.
My grandpa once told me that during the Great Depression they gave him the men’s room as his office and he got interrupted a lot from men doing their business, but he was still happy because he still had a job and nobody wanted his job.
Why give us an expanded flex band? I mean that only serves to give people a little work life balance. They are also kicking contractors a mile away to park. So much winning. /s
Nope x3
The time frame is ridiculous. The idea is long overdue. We're how many years past Covid?
What is an expanded flex band HRIC?
Here’s the big one: NO RETURN FOR ALJs. They still telework daily.
SSA had telework 7-8 yrs prior to covid. Telework Act of 2010 was passed with Republicans controlling the House & Democrats the Senate.
This has nothing to do with COVID. I have had a telework agreement since 2013. That's before kids for me. Also the Key Bridge was still standing then. My life is about to get a bit more difficult. My family will be affected the most.
Here’s the big one: NO RETURN FOR ALJs. They still telework daily.
Why should they? Telework shouldn’t change for any employees. Telework has been around since prior to Covid and it’s worked just fine. In fact, I would argue that tele-hearing as an option is fantastic for claimants if they choose to use it. Secondly, if you want to recruit competent, smart, and driven ALJs, you have to make their work environment at least comparable to the options they are other job options they are forgoing.
Most positions had some number of telework days for 20 years, way before COVID. 5 days a week is punitive, not "overdue".
All of OHO is exempt
I wonder if Trump will veto the CR and declare that the only essential government function during the shutdown is DOGE.
And are well below their performance metrics on average
No effect on me, as I have been in every day excepting weather days since the fall of 2021. Sucks for many colleagues, sucks for the agency given the people it will inevitably drive out. Not to mention that it is probably illegal. . .
Note the wording in the email to bargaining unit: telework "suspended". In the non-bargaining email: telework "terminated". O'Malley's MOU has been updated in CBA stating number of telework days is to remain the same until 10/2029, but there is a section that says management has the authority to "temporarily" suspend, change or reduced number of telework days due to "operational needs". This email does not address any "operational needs" or say that it's "temporary". A temporary suspension would have an end date. This email also came out the day before the VISP deadline of March 14. Is Dudek, Musk & the Doge Nerds trying to push more out the door. Is that the "operational need"?
I can also vouch for telework prior to COVID. Not only that, but I’m seeing lots of remote and hybrid private sector postings so this idea that everyone else is commuting to an office is an all out lie.
The vast majority of field offices had no telework by CRs or SRs prior to Covid. The pilot in our area was either 1 day a week or 1 day a pay period.
All I can say is two days was two days too much for FO employees.
@7:02: Really? This horses**t again? We get it, Terri. You think OHO is made of robots who can always work faster without any impact on quality of the work or quality of life, with a few humans sprinkled in that should just go jump
off a bridge if they don’t like your attitude. But lady, you’ve been dead for years now. So pull that cold dead hand back underground and shut the hell up already, or go wage this war on the old thread you started it in a month or two ago.
Why are ALJs getting special treatment? Everyone else is back. They are the highest paid agency employees. They should be back like everyone else. If OAO and OGC is back then OHO must too. Writing my congressman.
O’Malley is worthless. He could have protected us but chose not to. Now my entire office is back five days.
I’ve been working from home now for 5 years. Productivity is off the charts. I don’t necessarily mind RTO but getting rid of all telework is ridiculous particularly in areas where there is zero public transit. Plus, my office is not in a safe area and there’s nowhere to get a calorie without driving 3 miles.
I suspected Trump would abuse the “suspend” clause to end telework, as soon as I saw it. Why in the world did AFGE and O’Malley put that in?
@10:47 - The ALJs don't interact with the public except on hearing days. They are not answering the public telephones. They are not scanning faxes. There is nothing, on non-hearing days, that they can do in the office that they cannot do at home. The writers are teleworking fully full-time. If there is a need for an ALJ to communicate with staff, there is IM, email and phones. But it does not matter anyway because the Republican Senators from the Volunteer state have introduced legislation today to prohibit federal workers from joining unions and dissolving the current CBA.
Protected you how? The protection he offered (ridiculous CBA) should have never occurred. I have no idea what protection you are thinking he could have provided. The office is where we all belong. Welcome back!
Trump, Musk, and the Republicans are misleading people about federal employees and telework, just as they did when they recently said large numbers of deceased people are getting Social Security benefits.
They exaggerate the number of federal employees teleworking, falsely claim that work isn 't being tracked and that feds at home aren't really working, and claim that just about everyone in private industry is back in the office.
They even blame the long SSA wait times and heavy backlogs on telework,. when it is a staffing issue.
The lies and half truths are used to advance their goals of attacking, demeaning and demoralizing federal employees. They are also trying to hide from the public the fact that SSA needs more employees and overtime. Easier to blame the problems on telework.
Their ultimate goal is, of course, to privatize SSA.
Good point. AFGE and O'Malley made a huge mistake when they didn't carefully word their telework agreement. Leaving the opening to "temporarily suspend" telework, why did they put that in. Management is just using that to permanently suspend it.
OHO unions working out a carve out deal for specialized treatment shows they have no solidarity with BU employees
Who writes these things? It looks like only military spouses have to return their equipment, but I'm guessing they just put that sentence in the wrong paragraph.
10:48 honestly what are you taking about? He signed a telework agreement that was instantly ignored. Did you want him to stay on the job until he was fired?
O’Malley was urged to close down unused space for teleworking employees. Instead, he chose to RTO thousands and caused people to quit. Now when Trump took over he just changed it from 3 days to 5 days. We knew this would happen under Trump, but expected more from him. He’s worthless.
Same with others who have had to come back like OAO and OGC. Why do ALJs get special treatment?
I don’t think it was intentional on O’Malley’s part but thank goodness he didn’t do what you’re suggesting. Look at other agencies, or—come Monday—at SSA HQ! Lack of work space and/or parking is having ZERO effect on RTO, except to make things that much more miserable for employees.
The return to office policy is trivial compared to people losing jobs and what’s happening to our govt/society as a whole. Be glad u have a job.
AI. The DOGE kids, like most people under 30, don’t know how to construct sentences and paragraphs without the assistance of Grammarly or other AI programs. Nor does our shadow President Elon, who appears to have become frozen in a state of arrested development around age 12 or 13.
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions upon entering the White House was to order federal employees to return to the office.
The government workforce, he has repeatedly contended, could not be productive from home.
“I happen to be a believer that you have to go to work. I don’t think you can work from home,” Trump said on Feb. 11. “Nobody’s going to work from home, they’re going to be going out, they’re going to play tennis, they’re going to play golf. They’re going to do a lot of things. They’re not working.”
Three days later, Trump traveled to his sprawling Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, where he remained for parts of six consecutive days, according to an NBC News tracker. On one of the days, Trump signed two executive orders and a memorandum. He also held an impromptu press conference.
In other words, he worked from home.
That weekend, he did what he accused federal workers of doing: He went golfing. Between Feb. 14 and Feb. 19, he golfed on four different days. While he is far from the first president to do so, each golfing trip is a cost to taxpayers.
Before that, Trump hosted Republican senators at Mar-a-Lago in early February, where he delivered remarks including an update on his administration’s cost-cutting efforts.
Some federal workers said Trump’s frequent trips to his luxury estate in Florida — racking up millions of dollars in security and transportation costs — while ordering millions of government employees back to the office, reeked of hypocrisy.
I’d rather get RIF’d than RTO. As an ALJ I can walk my dog, do chores and watch my grandchildren all while on the clock. If I had to return to office I could do none of these things. So I appreciate Trump and DOGE for recognizing the great work-life balance working from home gives me and not forcing me back to work. If I did I’d have to quit.
What, if anything, is AFGE doing about this RTO order ? It's been 3 days since the RTO Email. : RTO is scheduled for tomorrow. Have they filed for a temporary restraining order? Any action at all? All we hear is crickets from AFGE.
AFGE sent SSA emails at work late last year , assuring employees that they had negotiated a a new contract, containing a provision that would protect our current levels of telework for five years. This RTO order now makes AFGE look both incompetent and weak.
The wording of the contract could have been better, but it still appears that this RTO would not stand up in court. It is in direct violation of the contract negotiated between AFGE and SSA management, signed by. Commissioner OMalley. Can the Trump Administration just ignore binding union contracts?
This is not a "temporary" suspension of telework due to operational needs, which the contract indicated would be the only justification for RTO. This is a permanent elimination of telework for all SSA employees!
AFGE response: "we're looking at it".
Also, it sucks that my union doesn't bother updating its website, but instead puts everything on Facebook.
And that my field office hasn't had a local union rep in months and attempts to reach out to AFGE to get one onboarded have been met with radio silence.
I would not want to be an ALJ right now. The DOJ has indicated in court filings that they are "at will" employees and will be treated as such. At some point, they are going to test this legal theory of "at will".
Why do you think it's only ALJs? No bargaining unit employee in OHO has to RTO. That includes AFGE and NTEU employees, not just IFPTE.
They probably can't get a TRO at this point because they haven't attempted, let alone exhausted, administrative options through the FLRA.
That's a pretty poor argument. Does the president ever really get time off? And is it not possible that you even on the golf course some elements of work may be taking place depending on who he is golfing with, but okay, the President is a hypocrite regarding work from home. I'm also pretty sure he's not worried about getting the laundry done or kids picked up from school during the workday. The problem with people's desire for telework has nothing to do with work and everything to do with a commute, kid duties, or just the sheer desire to rather be home. People have come to defend it not because it's better for work but better for them. It needs to go.
@1:15. Obvious troll is obvious
11:39: Exactly. The union isn’t omnipotent, and can’t skip the grievance process. And why all the pissing on the only people who are actually trying to help?
Maybe ALJs will have to start writing some their own decisions now. How many GS12s are going to hang around as decision writers in this environment.
Nothing has changed for decision writers to date. And I would guess that most have the common sense to make the Agency RIF them so they can take severance rather than the laughable buyout offers made to date.
Of course - but how many are eligible for the early outs. Those who are would have to be very financially unprepared not to take advantage of it
Maybe it's time for Trump to call his top security officials to Return to the Office (RTO).
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/26/hegseth-leaked-texts-atlantic-signal-yemen
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