Labor Board Details Return to Office Plan in Memo to Staff (2)

The National Labor Relations Board has instructed staff to start returning to the office March 3, despite a union contract that guarantees telework, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

The letter sent to employees Wednesday said workers must be in the office full time by the end of March, concluding the agency’s longstanding practice of allowing employees to telework.

The NLRB Professional Association representing staff in Washington slammed the RTO announcement, saying the parties’ collective bargaining agreement allows four days of telework.

“A contract isn’t worth the paper it is printed on if one side can just walk away from its end of the bargain,” the union said. “The agency’s complicity in the Musk/Trump nullification of our collective bargaining agreements is a profound betrayal of the principles this agency was founded on.”

The guidance comes after the Office of Personnel Management ordered agencies to mandate in-person work and as the administration continues to crack down on the federal workforce through widespread layoffs. OPM argued in Feb. 3 guidance that CBAs couldn’t prevent agencies from mandating in-office work, categorizing the issue under management rights.

William Cowen, acting general counsel of the NLRB, said Wednesday at an American Bar Association conference in Clearwater, Fla., that the policy wasn’t “ending telework.”

“This provides a phased approach,” he said. “People can rearrange their schedules so they can respond appropriately.”

The NLRB Union, which represents the agency’s regional office staff, said the “illegal RTO order will massively disrupt,” members’ lives.

“The NLRB’s flagrant abrogation of our rights and betrayal of its mission to protect and promote collective bargaining serves to further a broader government-wide scheme to drive career staff away from federal employment,” the union said in a statement. “The NLRB’s reckless and illegal RTO order will result in the degradation of federal labor law enforcement nationwide.”

The union’s primary option to oppose the policy change is the contract’s grievance and arbitration process. Decisions out of that process can be appealed to the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

The NLRB’s policy still allows staff to telework if they’ve been granted accommodations under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, have a temporary medical condition that prevents them from returning to the office immediately, or if they are military spouses with change station orders.