A Justice Department employee group is pushing back on agency plans to increase in-office work requirements, a potentially drastic shift for some teleworking attorneys who fear productivity losses and turnover.
DOJ leadership last month sent an email to employees signaling a new policy will be announced Aug. 1 and take effect after Labor Day. The June 27 email reviewed by Bloomberg Law solicited feedback in a short survey.
A working group of senior officials are developing a proposal for “substantially increasing meaningful in-person work,” the department’s acting head of administration told staff, citing a directive from the White House.
The DOJ Gender Equality Network, which represents 1,500 employees, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and his top deputies July 25 to express numerous concerns about the impact of stricter in-office mandates.
“This whole process has been opaque. And we’ve been told that a new policy is coming out Aug. 1, but we’ve been given no information about what the parameters of this policy are going to be,” said Colleen Phillips, acting president of DOJ GEN, in an interview. “There have been a lot of rumors going around that this new policy is going to be five or six days back” per two-week pay period, “which would be a substantial change for many employees.”
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