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FederalDaily - November 17, 2005

Study Looks at Potential Telework Savings

The Telework ExchangeSM—an online community focused on eliminating telework gridlock in the federal government—on Nov. 16 announced the results of its telework awareness study. The study shows that federal employees spend an average of 233 hours of their lives commuting each year. According to study responses, the average federal employee, who commutes five days a week, disperses eight tons of pollutants into the environment and spends $10,580 commuting to and from work annually. On average, this spending consists of 16 percent of their after-tax income. Survey responses indicate that if all eligible federal employees telework two days per week, the federal work force would realize collective savings of $3.3 billion and 2.7 million tons of pollutants not dispersed into the environment each year. The Telework Exchange “No Free Ride Study” is based on a survey of approximately 3,500 federal government employees registered to the Telework Exchange Web site. For more on this story, see the upcoming Nov. 28, 2005 , issue of Federal Employees News Digest. To subscribe, click here.

Senate Passes Defense Appropriations

The Senate on Nov. 15 passed the 2006 Defense Authorization bill by a vote of 98–0. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said the bill includes a 3.1 percent pay raise for all military personnel, expands health care benefits to children of troops killed in action, raises military death payments, and increases Service Group Life Insurance coverage for military families from $250,000 to $400,000 for all servicemembers. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said the legislation also adds $1.4 billion over the president’s budget request for force protection gear for servicemembers and authorizes full funding of an initiative to better equip the military health care system to identify and treat early signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The bill now goes to a joint House-Senate conference committee to reconcile differences with the version passed by the House earlier this year.

NTEU Pushes for CBP Improvements

National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen Kelley presented several proposals to the House Homeland Security Committee to improve the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The proposals include:

increasing journeyman inspectors’ pay grade to GS-12,

improving the existing foreign language award program,

providing CBP officers with the law enforcement officer status, and

ensuring trainees at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center do not have to work an unpaid sixth day of training each week.

Kelley argued the provisions would improve morale and border operations. NTEU did praise some of the provisions of the Border Security and Terrorism Protection Act of 2005, particularly the study of the “One Face at the Border” initiative. Kelley said the initiative is “dysfunctional.” She said, “Every CBP officer I speak with tells me that the ‘One Face at the Border’ initiative, as currently implemented, is a failure.”

Senate Passes Reenlistment Bonus Provision

Sens. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced a resolution to the Defense Authorization bill (S. 1042) that calls on the Pentagon to keep its promise to pay reenlistment bonuses to some full-time members of the Army National Guard. The resolution passed on Nov. 15 as part of the Defense Authorization bill by a vote of 98–0. According to the senators, the National Guard Bureau authorized the payment of reenlistment bonuses for mobilized Active Guard and Reserve and Military Technicians of the Army National Guard in January. Many of the bonuses, meant to provide $15,000 to those who reenlisted for six years, remain unpaid, the senators said. The resolution urges the Department of Defense to immediately pay those soldiers as promised.