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Published by the
National Treasury Employees Union, Chapter 46
Serving IRS Employees of North Texas
July/August 2008 |
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into law would allow even more federal employees
to participate in telework programs. To better bring home this point, let us assume that you and everyone else in your workgroup chose to participate in a full time telework schedule. The first thing you would notice is that you would no longer have that hour commute every morning and afternoon. If you then opted to take that two hours a day you are saving by not sitting behind the wheel, you could then go on a 4-10 (Article 23, Section 2G of our contact) work schedule of working 10 hour a day, 4 days a week instead of the traditional 8 hours a day, 5 day a week. As you can see, by doing this, you would still be starting and ending your workday at the same time, but only having to work 4 days a week. Yes, poof, as if by magic you would be getting one extra day a week off work and yet still only putting in the same number of hours (counting your commute time). If your regular commute time is more than an hour a day to the office, you save even more time. So as you can see, by taking advantage of a telework schedule, you would be gaining an extra day off every week. On top of that, you also save on gasoline for the daily commute you are no longer making and not having to pay for parking. This would be in effect a quite substantial pay raise. We should all be on a 10 hour work day and only get into an automobile when it is absolutely necessary to do our job in |
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| $4
Per Gallon for Gasoline Possibly by the time you read this you may be paying upwards to $5 a gallon for gasoline, since lately the price of gasoline seems to be going up on a daily basis. Because of this unprecedented increase in the cost of getting to the worksite and back, the time is well at hand for the IRS to awaken from its lethargic slumber of paying lip service to a problem and continuing on with business as usual and actually take some time and effort to create a better working environment for all employees. Service now has the opportunity to reduce the size of its expensive (and possibly unhealthy - 1114 Commerce for example) office buildings and truly afford its employees the opportunity to work at home. By doing this, the IRS would be creating a win/win/win situation for employees, customers and the environment. The first win would be allowing a telework environment, i.e. working from home at least one day per week. In this way an employee's annual commuting cost could be reduced dramatically. The May 2008 edition of the NTEU Bulletin refers to figures from a study conducted by the Telework Exchange that indicated in 2007 an employee's commuting cost would drop by almost 60 percent if the employee was able to come into the office only two days per week and telework the remaining three days a week. According to this same study, 96 percent of federal employees are currently eligible to be on some form of telework and nearly 80 percent are eligible to telework on a full time basis. To support the efforts of federal employees in their telework efforts, just recently, the House approved H.R. 4106 which if |
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NTEU
Mission: To Organize Federal Employees To Work
Together To Ensure That Every Federal Employee Is
Treated With Dignity And Respect. |