More Federal Workers are Telecommuting 79
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."
Discourage those staying behind? (Score:3, Insightful)
So how exactly is this a good thing, unless you plan on having no office at all - which is not quite feasible.
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Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one here who thinks the existence of that agency is the real story?
I telecommute almost every week (Score:5, Insightful)
Security please! (Score:3, Insightful)
Telecommuting sucks (Score:1, Insightful)
I suppose there might be some kind of tele-fu style that allows a telecommuting worker to be effective and subtle while striking from a great distance. But generally people aren't around for meetings, aren't around for ad-hoc conversations, are always less informed than people that are regularly in the office (I wonder why?), and in a few instances of direct observation are less productive than before they got telecommuting privilage.
Fine, people are giddy happy that they can work without actually showing up for work or paying attention to what's going on. Great for the worker satisfaction or some shit of the telecommuter. But as someone who has to work with these people telecommuting sucks.
ATF should be abolished (Score:5, Insightful)
Every federal agency should have to periodically justify its existence and some should be abolished. An agency can be outdated or it's functions better done by another agency or the states. Unfortunately the federal government has become a jobs program.
Re:Discourage those staying behind? (Score:3, Insightful)
My team lead was working a full day at the office and dealing with the builds at night from home. Whatever they were paying him, it wasn't enough to put up with that nonsense. So the abuse can go both ways.
That's the way my last boss treated telecommuting, as a supplement rather than as a substitute. And here's the kicker, I was working on nightly builds. Mine was the only group in a large company compelled to work scheduled, rotating shifts of uncompensated overtime. Either you were up until 2 or 3am tending to the builds and all the stuff that could and would go wrong or you had to get up at oh-dark-thirty to mop up and fix whatever carnage remained. At least with telecommuting, I only had to get out of bed and sit at my computer but I was still putting in extra time at the office too. But the boss didn't consider it real work and had no compunction about imposing on what had been your private life. Yeah, it was Lumbergh-a-rama. It was common to be awakened by the phone at 4AM, just after I'd fallen asleep. The pointy headed boss called me one time when I was in the middle of taking a massive dump. I wondered whether he could hear my voice reverberating off the bathroom tiles or splashing sounds.
Bottom line: Telecommuting can be a shackle as well as a quality of life improvement.
Also, don't ever let yourself be roped into tending to nightly builds. It is a thankless task.
Re:Discourage those staying behind? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why, oh why, in the world did you ANSWER THE PHONE?