Nearly a year after President Donald Trump directed nearly all federal employees to return to the office full-time, new exceptions to the policy have emerged.

An agency within the Labor Department is allowing some of its employees to work remotely. At the Department of Health and Human Services, an arbitrator is directing one of its agencies to consult with one of its unions over more exemptions to the in-office mandate.

A recent memo from the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) states that some of its employees will be eligible for remote work later this month.

OWCP Deputy Director Douglas Pennington told employees in the memo that, as the agency “vigorously implemented” Trump’s mandate for a full-time return to office last year, “we determined that OWCP will be extremely challenged to cover rent expenses.”

According to the Jan. 6 memo, the Labor Department will allow “100% remote work” for OWCP employees who perform adjudicatory work and perform payment processing work.

Pennington wrote that while most of the agency’s positions benefit from in-person collaboration, “certain OWCP positions do not engage in collaborative interactions, but benefit from focused time free of distractions, and therefore would benefit from remote work and allow a reduction in rent expenses.”

Eligible employees will be able to request full-time remote work starting Jan. 26. If employees are not approved for remote work, they must continue to show up to the office full-time. The memo states that increased telework “is not an option.”

Pennington wrote that allowing a subset of agency employees to work remotely, while having the rest of the workforce in the office full-time, is the “most cost-effective way to accomplish a reduction in rent expenses and continue performing OWCP’s mission.”

Meanwhile, a third-party arbitrator is directing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to meet with the American Federation of Government Employees to discuss exemptions to the administration’s return-to-office mandate.

The arbitrator, Timothy Buckalew, wrote in his opinion that CMS “was not required to negotiate over return to in-person work,” but found that the agency “violated statutory obligations to bargain with the union over the implementation of the work in-person directive.”

Buckalew found that Trump’s return-to-office presidential memorandum (PM) allowed remote work to continue in some limited cases, including medical need.

However, the arbitrator determined CMS has not made any exceptions to its return-to-office policy.

“For reasons not apparent in the record, agency management declined to use the discretion allowed in the PM to make exemptions to the wholesale return to work or to submit the issues of impacts to bargaining as required by law as protected in the PM,” Buckalew wrote.

HHS has recently set new restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.

The arbitrator is ordering CMS to meet and negotiate with AFGE over the “effects of the implementation of the directive on work/life of employees.”

According to Buckalew, AFGE Local 192 President Anita Marcel Autrey stated that CMS “unilaterally repudiated” parts of the union’s collective bargaining agreement, and that implementation of the agency’s return-to-office policy was “inconsistent and erratic.”

Autrey told the arbitrator that CMS employees in Chicago and San Francisco have not fully returned to the office because of a lack of office space.

Meanwhile, about 60 financial management employees were granted an exemption to keep working remotely because their work was considered essential to a new budget bill.

About 90% of CMS employees had telework agreements before the second Trump administration.

Donna O’Dowd, director of the workforce compliance division of the CMS Office of Human Capital, told the arbitrator that the presidential memo was a governmentwide rule that “left the agency with no discretion but to follow such directives.”

Federal News Network has reached out to OWCP and CMS for comment.

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