Agriculture Official Has Little Time for Flexible Scheduling

An Agriculture Department undersecretary has canceled certain alternative work schedules for management officials in St. Louis and Washington and told the affected employees to plan on working a traditional eight-hour, five-day-per-week schedule.

"With just over two years remaining to accomplish the agenda that I laid out for Rural Development, I feel that it is necessary and critical to our success that all key management officials are available and accessible on-site each day in order to help us accomplish such a large agenda remaining for Rural Development," Thomas C. Dorr , Agriculture's undersecretary for rural development, told his management team in an e-mail last week.

Dorr's decision underscores the tension inside numerous agencies over flexible work schedules. Many agencies provide such arrangements to help employees balance their work and home lives, but political appointees and senior managers often prefer to have workers in the office and available.

Typically, employees on an alternative work schedule, known as AWS, work longer office hours during certain days of a pay period in exchange for a day off every other week, often a Friday or a Monday.

Dorr gave his management officials 10 days' notice of the schedule change, effective Sunday. That drew a protest from one of his subordinates, who provided the e-mail anonymously, saying he feared retribution.

Dorr "gave no reasonable time for people to adjust their schedules," the employee said in a letter accompanying the e-mail. The employee said Dorr's decision will disrupt carpool schedules, child- and elder-care arrangements, and activities that employees reserve for their days off.

The employee also said Dorr's decision to cancel AWS for Rural Development managers goes against long-standing federal personnel policies, authorized in law, that encourage such schedules.

Ed Loy , press secretary for the Agriculture Department, said: "We need to have the ability to have senior management on a similar and consistent schedule to have the collaboration we need to move forward."

The e-mail by Dorr was prompted by the recent heightened focus on renewable energy sources and biomass research, Loy said. The department's Rural Development offices -- which are helping to promote the president's energy policy -- provide money for loans, grants and technical assistance to rural communities and businesses.

Dorr's action applies to General Schedule 14 and 15 employees and to the Senior Executive Service. Loy said he did not have a count of how many management employees will shift off AWS. Rural Development has about 170 employees who could be affected, out of 1,800 workers in Washington and St. Louis offices.

The Senate confirmed Dorr, an Iowa farmer, in July 2005, ending a four-year battle over his nomination. The Senate vote, 62 to 38, came after he wrote a letter of apology for making what critics called racially insensitive remarks in 1999 and for a controversy that led him to reimburse the government for some federal farm subsidies.

Vacation Paperwork

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Timely paperwork is a key to not losing those precious vacation days, it appears.

Seventeen employees at the Federal Trade Commission recently petitioned to have leave restored, but nine requests were initially denied because their forms for recouping leave took too long to get to the personnel office.

The forms are supposed to be filed at the time staffers are asked to put off their vacations, but that did not happen and many of the employees had more than 100 leave hours at risk of being lost.

The nine affected employees work in the FTC's Bureau of Competition, where vacations go out the window when companies submit merger applications that start a 30-day countdown for a recommendation. Litigation can also eat up staff time and ruin vacation plans, since the agency must respond to court deadlines.

"It is difficult for people to look at their year and plan their leave," said Nancy Ness Judy , the agency's director of public affairs.

FTC managers are holding meetings to resolve the cases of lost leave and get paperwork in order, she said. "These people gave up their vacations to work on litigation, and we want to make sure they are treated fairly," Judy said.

Please join me at noon Wednesday for a discussion of workplace problems and solutions on Federal Diary Live at washingtonpost.com. My e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.