Unions are "Baking In" Remote Work for Federal Employees

In one of their early moves, the Republican majority in the House introduced a bill that would undermine hybrid work arrangements for federal workers, forcing the government’s employees back into the office and out of any work-from-home strategies. The theory is that the agencies cannot be as productive out of the office as in it.

The bill already faces a number of difficulties and a new one has just surfaced: the start of union contracts that are including promises of flexible work.

The topic is of interest to the CRE office sector because of the amount of space the federal government leases: with the General Services Administration (GSA) having been managing 7,760 leases for almost 180 million square feet and $5.7 billion in annual rent as of March 2022. But according to a GSA survey of federal agencies last fall, out of 24, 16 were planning to reduce the number of leases and 19 expected to reduce square footage over the coming three years. That would have a big impact not only on property owners, but potentially on the tax bases and economic activity in many metro areas.

The House bill, introduced by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the new chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that oversees federal agencies, is called the “Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems,” or “SHOW UP” Act of 2023. If it should become law, it would require within 30 days of enactment that every federal agency would have to return to the “telework policies, practices, and levels of the agency as in effect on December 31, 2019, and may not expand any such policy, practices, or levels until the date that an agency plan is submitted to Congress with a certification by the Director of the Office of Personnel Management.”

The general sense seems similar to what The Real Estate Roundtable suggested in a letter to President Biden in December 2022.

A similar bill was filed in May 2022 by former Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico who lost her reelection bid for office last year and who is no longer in Congress.

Passage into law would require a Democratic-controlled Senate and President Biden to go along, which alone seems very unlikely. Potentially, Republicans could use passage of a final budget or even an increase of the debt ceiling, as a negotiation to push the measure into law, assuming they could keep their members in line.

But the prospect of conflict with union contracts, uncovered by TechTarget, adds a wrinkle to any plans. “Remote work policies are also getting baked into federal employee union agreements, which could make it difficult for federal agencies to order workers back to the office even if they wanted to,” the story said.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) claims to be “made up of over 281,000 workers in almost every agency of the federal and D.C. governments, spread across 936 local unions.” In December 2022, after some extended legal struggles with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the union said that the two parties had reached a settlement over immediate flexible work arrangements “while we negotiate terms for a permanent telework program.”

Should this become a broader practice in union negotiations with the government, it would add another complication in instituting a new law, should one get through the complete legislative process.