Congress

6 federal workforce bills to watch this fall

Hiring reform, telework, locality pay, official time and paid leave are a just a handful of the federal workforce priorities currently pending in Congress.

Drew Friedman@dfriedmanWFED

August 12, 2024 4:25 pm

6 min read

With just a few months left in the 118th Congress, lawmakers are pushing forward their priorities for the federal workforce with an array of new bills, while also rehashing some long-standing legislation.

House and Senate appropriators still appear far from reaching a spending agreement for fiscal 2025, and a 2% federal pay raise seems likely on the horizon, but there are still plenty of other legislative efforts that would have direct impacts for federal employees.

For instance, one largely bipartisan bill, the Chance to Compete Act, would bring major reforms to the federal hiring process. If enacted, the legislation would create a host of new requirements and expectations for agencies to transform the way they recruit and evaluate federal job candidates.

Although the House passed the Chance to Compete Act near the start of 2023 in a vote of 422 to 2, the Senate has been slower to act on its companion bill — until just recently. On July 31, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously advanced its version of the bill in a vote of 11 to 0.

The 2023 Chance to Compete Act, first introduced by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), would codify and expand several recruitment strategies that some agencies began incorporating during both the Trump and Biden administrations. The bill, if enacted, would require agencies to implement many hiring practices that have already been shown to work well.

Under the legislation, subject matter experts would have to conduct resume reviews, agencies would have to implement technical job assessments while phasing out candidate self-assessments, and hiring managers would have to place more emphasis on candidates’ actual skills rather than their education. The Office of Personnel Management would also have to support agencies as they better incorporate the use of shared certificates.

The current progress on the federal workforce bill now mirrors how far the Chance to Compete Act made it through the previous 117th Congress. In 2022, the legislation similarly cleared the House and advanced out of HSGAC, but the bill did not pass by the end of 2022. It’s still unclear whether the current version of the legislation will advance further by the end of this Congress.

A closer eye on telework, locality pay

Separately, a pair of bills that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) introduced on July 30 would target federal workforce pay and benefits in multiple ways. One bill, the Federal Employee Return to Work Act, would completely cut locality pay for federal employees who telework at least one day per week.

Instead, according to the legislation, federal employees who telework would receive only their basic pay rates. If enacted, the bill could lead to 25% pay cuts for some employees, or even larger, depending on their locality pay area.

The bill would make exceptions for employees who telework due to a disability, as well as Foreign Service members, federal law enforcement officers and active-duty military members.

Cassidy’s other newly introduced bill, the Federal Employee Locality Accountability in Retirement Act, would exclude locality pay from retirement annuity calculations for new federal employees entering the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS).

Cassidy said his legislation aims to end what he said is “telework abuse.”

“Federal employees get paid extra to work in higher-cost cities. But what if they don’t show up to work? Why should they get paid?” Cassidy said in a statement. “If you don’t show up for work, you don’t get paid at the same rate just for teleworking.”

The legislation follows multiple other attempts from Congress members to investigate or alter telework policies for the federal workforce.

Continued efforts to prohibit official time

Another Senate bill once again aims to change the use of official time in the federal workforce. Legislation that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced on July 31, called the No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act, would prohibit federal employees from using on-the-clock hours for union-related activities.

The bill aims to address what Lee said is “misuse” of official time — and instead propel feds to work on union activities in their own time, at their own expense.

“Taxpayers should not be burdened with the cost of federal employees engaging in union activities,” Lee said in a July 31 statement.

Over at least the last decade, Republican lawmakers have made multiple attempts to scrap official time for feds, but so far, no bills related to official time have come close to passage.

A fiscal 2019 report on official time from OPM — the most recent publicly available — shows that official time hours decreased 28% between 2016 and 2019.

An attempt to restore Chevron

Some Democratic lawmakers are also pushing back against the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned the long-standing federal regulatory practice known as Chevron deference.

A new bill, the Restoring Congressional Authority Act, which Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced Aug. 2, looks to reverse the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision.

If enacted, the legislation would restore and codify Chevron deference, allowing federal judges to rely on an agency’s rulemaking expertise when federal regulations are challenged in court.

Additionally, the legislation would require courts to consider congressional intent when they review an agency’s statutory interpretation.

“Our country is founded on checks and balances, and it’s time to restore that balance by putting a much-needed check on the federal judiciary,” Wyden said in an Aug. 2 statement.

Paid leave for reserve service members

Finally, under one other new bill, federal employees who are also reserve military members would see more opportunities to take paid leave.

The Supporting Employees in the Guard and Reserve Act, which Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) introduced in July, would bump up reserve members in the federal workforce from 15 days to 20 days of paid military leave annually. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.) previously introduced a similar House companion bill.

Crapo and Cortez Masto said the bipartisan legislation aims to help reserve service members attend military trainings without losing pay.

“Currently, a reservist must attend military trainings for 12 weekends and 14 days of annual training at a minimum,” the lawmakers wrote in a July 25 press release accompanying the bill’s introduction. “However, federal leave policies often only allow for about two weeks of military leave annually.”

In addition to increasing the number of paid leave days members can use, the bill would let some paid leave days roll over to the following calendar year. The legislation has also been introduced as an amendment to the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

If the legislation is enacted, the lawmakers said “increasing the number of days for military leave will help recruit and retain reserve service members and provide them greater economic stability.”