Philly-area federal workers get more details on their future, but confusion remains for many
Pennsylvania has 19,581 federal workers employed at the VA. Nearly half of them are eligible for remote work.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which employs the largest share of federal workers in Pennsylvania, shared new details Monday on how the department will return to full-time, in-person work.
The update comes as federal workers across agencies are the focus of several executive orders from President Donald Trump. The administration has said it aims to reduce the federal workforce, and sent out a “deferred resignation” offer last week.
Some groups of workers are expected to be in the office full time beginning later this month, though requirements for unionized employees remain unclear. The ability to work remotely will end for several groups of workers by the end of February or April, with some exceptions including for employees with a disability or medical condition.
One employee who has worked for the VA in Philly for over 20 years, a union member who spoke Monday on the basis of anonymity for fear of retaliation at work, said some details are better than none.
“Believe it or not, [I feel] a little less uncertain than I was feeling last week, because at least now we know that there’s some sort of plan in place,” the employee said. “I might not agree with the plan, but there’s a plan in place.”
The VA’s RTO plan
Over 20% of the VA’s more than 479,000 employees are able to work remotely or have a telework agreement, the agency said in its note on Monday.
Of the VA’s 19,581 workers in Pennsylvania, 48.9% were eligible for telework as of March 2024, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Certain people — including but not limited to political appointments, senior level and scientific and professional employees — will be required to work in the office full time by Feb. 24. Supervisors who are stationed within 50 miles of an agency facility will also be required to return by that date. Certain exceptions will be made, the department said.
Most nonbargaining unit employees whose “duty stations” are within 50 miles of an agency must return by April 28.
Exceptions will be made for individuals who have a “disability, qualifying medical condition or other compelling reason.”
“This is a common sense step toward treating all VA employees equally,” acting VA secretary Todd Hunter said in a news release. “Most VA clinical staff don’t have the luxury of working remotely, and we believe the performance, collaboration and productivity of the department will improve if all VA employees are held to the same standard.”
In-office requirements for other federal workers
OPM also sent out a memo on Monday for federal employees across agencies.
The OPM memo says unions can negotiate “procedures for determining individual telework eligibility within authorized telework levels” but asserts that it is a “management right” to set what positions are remote-work eligible and how much remote work is allowed.
The OPM memo says collective bargaining agreements that say otherwise are “unlawful and cannot be enforced.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents some 800,000 federal employees released a statement on Monday saying the Trump administration is “violating the law by encouraging agencies to ignore collective bargaining agreements.”
“If we have agreements that are signed off on, whether it was during a Biden administration or it might have been during the last Trump administration, those things are set by law, we have a right to have them,” said Philip Glover, national vice president for the AFGE District 3, which represents about 9,400 federal workers in and near Philadelphia.
The administration also made clear in a Jan. 31 memo that it does not intend to honor collective bargaining agreements reached in the last month before Trump’s inauguration. “In the final days of the prior administration’s tenure, it purposefully finalized collective bargaining agreements with federal employees in an effort to harm my administration by extending its wasteful and failing policies beyond its time in office,” it says.