Nuclear Regulatory Commission employees should get the equivalent of three telework days each week instead of four, commissioners decided in a lopsided vote that killed the agency’s latest remote work-policy.
In a 3-1 vote that concluded this week, the four-member NRC voted to repeal the agency’s flexible work model, which allowed up to eight days of telework for employees who are paid every two weeks.
Only NRC Chair Christopher Hanson voted in favor of the eight-day policy. Fellow Democratic Commissioner Bradley Crowell voted against the policy, as did Republican Commissioners Annie Caputo and David Wright.
The three commissioners who voted “no” telegraphed their positions about the remote work policy during an all-hands meeting in September.
With the flexible work model gone, NRC reverted to a prior telework policy that allows most employees the weekly equivalent of three telework days. As with the now-defunct flexible work model, an employee’s direct supervisor is allowed to approve the telework days.
High-ranking members of the federal government’s senior executive service, however, will not get three telework days a week. These people will be required to log at least three six-hour, in-person work days a week, according to a memo about the commission’s vote to Daniel Dorman, NRC’s executive director for operations, from Thomas Herrera, then the acting secretary of the commission.
in voting response sheets respectively dated Oct. 26 and Oct. 20 and uploaded to NRC’s website on Monday, Both Crowell and Wright said the flexible work model, written by NRC’s executive director, decreased the amount of in-person work days at a time when the White House Office of Management and Budget had asked federal agencies to increase in-person work time.
Caputo voted against the flexible work model on Oct. 26, according to a voting record dated Oct. 31, though the NRC as of Wednesday had not uploaded her comments about the vote to the agency’s website.
