Telework Improvements Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. LYNCH. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, as chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Federal workforce, postal service, and the District of Columbia, I'm pleased to offer H.R. 1722 for consideration. This legislation seeks to improve and expand access to telework for Federal employees in the executive branch.

The bipartisan measure before us today was introduced by Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland, along with myself and Representatives Frank Wolf, Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Jim Moran of Virginia, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, and Danny Davis of Illinois back in March 2009. The bill was then amended and ordered reported favorably by our subcommittee on March 24, and again shortly thereafter by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 14, 2010.

Madam Speaker, despite the evolving nature of the way the Federal Government conducts its affairs, telework, which allows an employee to regularly perform work from a remote location other than their usual workplace, continues to be underutilized by Federal agencies. Experience has consistently demonstrated that the private and public sector employers who utilize telework experience increased productivity and retention rates. More specifically, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Defense Information Systems Agency have successfully used telework programs, which shows potentially how telework can transform and enhance agencies' customer service offerings for our citizens and do so with greater efficiency and lower costs.

H.R. 1722 provides for improvements to increase the number of Federal employees that participate in telework programs by requiring agencies to develop comprehensive telework policies within 1 year that allow authorized employees to telework and by directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop regulations on overall telework policies and to annually evaluate agency telework programs.

H.R. 1722 also seeks to elevate the importance of incorporating telework into the continuity of operations planning for our Federal agencies. For example, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry estimated that the use of telework reduced the estimated cost of lost productivity during the recent snowstorms this past winter in the District of Columbia by approximately $30 million per day.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of moving telework forward by passing H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvement Act. This legislation has long enjoyed bipartisan support in the Oversight Committee and in the House over several Congresses and will help ensure the government operates more efficiently and effectively as a modern-day employer.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I do want to note that we do have one study here that I think is probably the most extensive one done on comparing private sector jobs to Federal jobs, and that is by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they compared occupation to occupation. They took an engineer in private sector versus an engineer working for the Federal Government, and they have reported that Federal employees are paid 22 percent less than their private sector counterparts.

At this point, I yield 5 minutes to an energetic and diligent member of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I again would like to express my strong support for the passage of H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvements Act of 2010. I would like to thank Mr. Sarbanes, our lead sponsor on this measure which is before us today, which promotes good and common sense governance policy which will ensure a more efficient, responsive Federal government, especially in times of national security and weather-related emergencies.

Moreover, H.R. 1722 will allow executive branch agencies to act more like other 21st century employers, particularly private sector employers, which for years have utilized and reaped the benefits of telework in terms of increased job productivity as well as employee moral.

I want to paraphrase the words of my Republican colleague, Mr. Wolf of Virginia, who said that the vote for saving money and the vote for cutting costs here is a ``yes'' vote on this measure.

With that, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 1722.

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of points here that I would like to make at the outset, and I appreciate the spirit in which the gentleman has offered these amendments.

Many of the concerns that the gentleman has raised in his motion to recommit have been addressed in the bill.

I would like to begin by saying that right now, with respect to tax delinquency and enforcing the tax laws against Federal employees, we have greater protections right now in place against those Federal employees than exist against any other employee in America today. We have the ability to remove them from their jobs. We have the ability to garnish their wages. We have the ability to demand of them compliance with the tax law that is much more difficult to implement against the average private sector employee. So I do not think that the measures here and the ``seriously delinquent'' category that does not exist under the IRS Tax Code well serves the underlying purpose of this bill.

I do want to say that prohibiting collective bargaining activity while teleworking is also a question of possible violation with other statutes that I believe may be infringed upon by this motion. So I would be very, very concerned about--obviously we were given this motion about a minute ago--well, a couple of minutes ago, so I'm not so sure how that would affect Taft-Hartley collective bargaining rights. But it would appear that they would do a carve-out here for those workers who are teleworking and yet unable to exercise the rights that otherwise might exist in those employees. So I am very, very concerned about that.

I understand the restrictions. Further, the amended version of H.R. 1722 already incorporates language to restrict allowing employees to telework based on previous disciplinary issues that might have been presented.

With respect to the concern raised by my friend and colleague with respect to accessing pornographic sites, I should note that history has shown us that those who rail against weaknesses of the human spirit are usually the very people who succumb to those very weaknesses. But we would certainly agree that that is inappropriate behavior and it should be punished. I tend to think that that is a point of agreement, but I think it's just a matter of how to implement that prohibition.

There is also a difficulty at the heart of this, which is that the gentleman's motion to reconsider requires us to demonstrate a savings now at this level. Here's the problem: We are not in an Appropriations Committee. We have not appropriated any money for this. We don't have the ability to do that. This is authorization. So how are we supposed to know where the break point on savings might be when we don't know, in this forum, how much money might be spent?

Those are structural flaws, I think, in the bill that prevent us from accepting the amendment at this time. However, I understand that some Members may see one or two of these issues as decisive on their behalf, and I would understand and respect the Members' rights to vote as they might on this measure. But because of the issues that I have raised--one, because it creates a level of impossibility for us to demonstrate savings when we don't know how much money is going to be used in implementing this measure. That will be decided by the appropriators. And, as well, we realize that to set this up, in order to establish the teleworking protocols, there will be an expenditure to begin with, but the savings will result at a later time. So I urge my colleagues to vote against this.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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