Ross Gianfortune
This is GovExec Daily, where we bring you the federal stories that really matter.  It's March 18, 2021 . I’m Ross Gianfortune.

When President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law last week, the key highlights were the child tax credit and the $1,400 stimulus payments for qualifying people. But, for federal employees, there are other provisions that will affect their lives going forward.

The bill has a provision that grants feds, including those working for the U.S. Postal Service, more sick leave if they are suffering from symptoms of the coronavirus, if they are caring for a family member who has COVID-19, if they are getting vaccinated or experiencing symptoms related to the vaccine, or if they are caring for a child whose school or child care center is closed or engaging in virtual learning due to the pandemic. The provision will be available until next fall.

While the provision was being negotiated, Republican Senators voiced their opposition to the paid leave. Sen. Rob Portman spoke about the bill earlier this month on the Senate floor, highlighting his disagreement.

Sen. Rob Portman
Why should taxpayers pay for federal employees to get 600 hours of leave on private sector employees are suffering more job losses than public sector. It hardly seems like a good use of taxpayer dollars.

Ross Gianfortune 
The bill passed without any Republican support in the House or Senate, so Portman’s criticisms were not heeded. Polling showed that the bill had the support of the majority of Republlican voters. Joining me next to discuss the provisions benefiting feds in the COVID-19 relief bil will be Erich Wagner. He covers the federal workforce and he’ll discuss the bill and other pay & benefits stories he’s been working on after a short break.

Since the COVID 19 pandemic, state and local leaders face their greatest challenges to protect the health of residents while dealing with economic turmoil, what lies ahead for states and cities and counties in a post pandemic world. During the one year into the COVID crisis townhall viewers will explore how state and local governments plan to move forward in a way that makes them more resilient and equitable visit route fifty.com slash events for more information. That's route tfifty.com slash events

Ross Gianfortune 
Since even before he took office in January, President Joe Biden promised federal employees that he would support them in the White House. His first major legislative victory as president, The massive  American Rescue Plan, passed last week with provisions in it that back up his claims of having feds’s backs.

Erich Wagner covers the federal workforce or us here at GovExec. He joins me now to discuss the relief bill’s provisions that affect feds and other stories he’s been covering on the workforce beat. 

Welcome back to the show

Erich Wagner
Good to be here.

Ross Gianfortune 
So what's in the plan, the American rescue plan and what does it have in it for feds?

Erich Wagner
That's the biggest thing is the American rescue plan for feds, you know, aside from the stimulus checks that most people have access to is a lead provision, between now and September 30 federal employees who get sick with the Coronavirus get symptoms and are seeking a diagnosis for kids who are caring for a family member either a spouse or a child who has gotten COVID Or if you are caring for a child whose school or childcare center is closed or engaging in virtual learning, due to the pandemic. You have up to 15 weeks of paid leave, which is calculating $100 a week to spend to do that. So, digitally. This codifies something that was already illustratively in place but it confirms that if our a federal employee working on the frontlines, You're not teleworking you are, let's say you're a CBP officer at the air. You get COVID. For the purposes of signing up for workers compensation for the Labor Department, it will be assumed that God COVID To ignore duties at work, which is a much lower bar then having to try to prove that some passenger you came in contact with, with carry the virus. That's how you're getting there. So, that was already in place, since it May or June of last year, through an administrative thing at the labor. This codifies it that that is the case and

Ross Gianfortune
Biden also signed an executive order recently that is about Feds taking time off for election. What does it say, and how is that compare to previous guidance on the issue from OPM

Erich Wagner
He signed this executive order a week or two ago about trying to make it, make it so the federal government is encouraging people to vote however, can't some of that is you know aid to states who are trying to expand their voting, things like that but it also instructs OPM to come up with stronger rules in terms of urging federal employees to vote and federal employees to volunteer as like non partisan poll workers all watch, you know, OPM has always had said that you take time off some sort of time off on election day if needed to vote, but in the most recent election you know it was a lot more guarded. You know, if you, let's say if you were, if you were voting on Election Day. And the polls were Oh, I believe more than three hours after the end of your shift, you would not get any time off to vote with the expected to go at work. Similarly, you could really get time to do early voting unless you could prove to your agency that, you know, basically no other time to do it, because the OPM decided that people are choosing to do early voting versus same day, you know on Election Day voting. So, you know, there were a lot more restrictions and said that this executive order basically instruct OPM to look for ways to loosen that up to, you know, to really encourage people to get out to the polls.

Ross Gianfortune
I guess let's move on to Social Security, one sorry that we would find the past year is the union management fight at SSA so what's the status of SSA and Biden's workforce porters, and how are the union's kind of dealing with that.

Unknown Speaker  7:20  
It's kind of hard to say, the unions are still pretty fed up with SSA, you know they've been fighting with management for years now. Some I've said that it's good perennially, one of the worst in terms of labor management relations like going back, well before the Trump administration, but basically they have said that SSA is kind of doing the bare minimum to make it look like they're complying with the executive order without really doing what the order. Really commands which is you know, a full reset of of labor management relations and origami over permissive topics in a collaborative manner. Basically, with one of the IDS AFGE they have negotiated a temporary agreement to restore official time, but that only runs till September 30 and the union have fears that the agency will sort of go as slow as possible on the other topics that they need to renegotiate to try to sort of leverage the end of this temporary official time deal to encourage them to take a worse deal that otherwise would have. And, you know, for the agencies part of the agency says that it is currently conducting a review of all of its CPAs, and it has asked for input from previous on that, and they're hoping that review is done. I believe April 23 was the target date. So, it, you know, it may just be the agency is doing a lot of due diligence before it really jumps it, but I can tell you that. Other agencies have been a lot faster in terms of going straight to renegotiations.

Ross Gianfortune  
Yeah I was gonna say that the history of SSA in last year so suggest that if they're taking their time there, there may be a reason behind it. I'm sure at least the workforce, from people I've spoken to,  aren't going to give a lot of benefit of the doubt to SSA management. What about appointees versus sorry about Social Security in the state of appointees there, what does that look like, you know, as we talk in March.

Erich Wagner
Honestly, not much has changed on the administration side. Andrew, Saul and David Black the petitioner, Deputy Commissioner respectively, of social security, our main other jobs, but you know on the outside, it seems like there is, you know, growing dissatisfaction with that. We should note that Saul and black are both Trump appointees, They technically are on term appointments, although the Biden administration has not been shy about demanding the resignation and if not fire outright firing people from the Trump administration, who were on these term appointments. Last into the ministration. But yeah, in recent weeks. In addition to the unions at the agency and some of the Social Security advocacy groups who have already demanded their ouster we've seen Senator Sherrod Brown he has demanded their reservation as well. You know, he runs a subcommittee on Social Security, and then a number of House committee leaders have also joined the effort. It's interesting to see if anything changes, but so far, you know, none of this has really moved the needle that we can see.

Ross Gianfortune 
Let's move to OPM and these now somewhat infamous, and now rescinded diversity training or for agencies and contractors OPM has new guidance on that. What does it say

Erich Wagner
it was honestly pretty simple guidance, you know, the main thing is just, it was basically stop submitting diversity training stuff to us we don't need to review it, and you guys can go back to doing what we were doing before all of this happened, and the main really newsy part of it was, there was this line about how the administration plans to expand on its inclusion efforts, so it'll be interesting to see what they do going forward.

Ross Gianfortune
I would really hate to be the person who had to get all of those messages, you know, whether it's email or or just actual paper of like, oh can you approve this like your condo. No, we don't have to worry about it anymore because I imagine there was a lot of that, that change, we'll finish up on this, you covered the anti EU legislative conference this week, and they're talking about priorities now that they have, as I said up top of a president who, at least, is vocal about his support of federal employees and an organized labor. So, what is NTP prioritizing this year and what is their outlook

Erich Wagner 
really their priorities and I think this is true. All of the employee unions are sort of twofold split, split it up between, you know, their lobbying and Congress and their bargaining with agencies. So, on the congressional side, they're focused on getting a better pay raise, they support the bill in Congress right now that would provide 3.2% average pay raise, to all federal employees, it's 2.2% across the board and 1% increase in locality pay, they want to protect benefits. Most of you know it's important to note that the most recent tax cuts that actually happened and Federal Employee Benefits happened during the budget talks in the Obama administration. So there they remain on guard on that stuff. They're also focused on workplace safety with the COVID pandemic and the eventual need to reopen. Securing vaccines for federal employees, and then creating legislation to make sure that, you know, anti worker plans like the Schedule F. Can't happen administratively. And then on the other side that you know like we were talking about before they weren't there at the agency level they want to focus on agencies and make sure that they move as quickly as possible to resent the provisions of the Trump executive orders on union issues and workplace rights. They said, You know, Tony Reardon their President was talking with reporters on Tuesday and he said, you know, he sees some really good progress at some agencies, you know USPTO already has, has said, yeah, we'll go back to the older group, we'll go back to the contract you had before, the Trump era came out. But then on other agencies, HHS, was the one that he really singled out, you know, there's really been no movement at all and the Acting Secretary there has apparently not responded to multiple requests to talk with LTE, so you know maybe that'll change when, how to hear but Sarah gets confirmed later this week, but yeah, I think people are, you know, it's been almost two months now since the executive order on this came out, and it's been almost a couple weeks now since the OPM guidance came out that agencies had been sort of waiting for it to really do anything so I think union officials are really itching to get to work on this stuff.

Ross Gianfortune 
Yeah, I imagine, there's a lot of anticipation for this, this era and especially as contrast to the Trump years so I'm sure they have a lot on their plates and a lot, I guess, from their perspective look forward to Erich. Thanks so much for being on the show. 

Erich Wagner
Good to be here. 

Ross Gianfortune
Thanks for listening to GovExec Daily. Our show was produced by Adam Butler and hosted by me, Ross Gianfortune. We want to thank Erich Wagner for joining the program. Our music is the song “Signals” by Catfish Dancing. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can email us any feedback at podcast @ govexec.com or hit us on Twitter @ Govexec.  
 
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