<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><BillSummaries>
    <item congress="119" measure-type="hr" measure-number="357" measure-id="id119hr357" originChamber="HOUSE" orig-publish-date="2025-01-13" update-date="2025-05-27">
        <title>Back to Work Act</title>
        <summary summary-id="id119hr357v00" currentChamber="HOUSE" update-date="2025-05-27">
            <action-date>2025-01-13</action-date>
            <action-desc>Introduced in House</action-desc>
            <summary-text><![CDATA[<p><strong>Back to Work Act</strong></p><p>This bill limits&nbsp;federal agency employees' telework to up to 40% of the work days&nbsp;in any pay period and eliminates certain pay increases for teleworking employees.</p><p>Under current law, executive agencies must maintain policies detailing how their employees may work remotely and enter into telework agreements with participating employees. The bill requires telework agreements to cap employees' telework at 40% of the work days&nbsp;in a pay period, specify&nbsp;that the agency will monitor employees' telework via remote technical methods, and make telework&nbsp;subject to annual review by the agency.&nbsp;The bill also&nbsp;eliminates locality-based and automatic annual pay adjustments for employees with telework agreements.</p><p>The bill authorizes agencies to further restrict the amount of telework permitted based on an employee's specific role or other circumstances (e.g., working with classified information). Agencies may also waive the limitation for inclement weather or&nbsp;exigent circumstances or for an employee who (1) is married to a member of the Armed Forces or federal law enforcement officer; (2) holds a position requiring highly specialized experience or frequent travel; or (3) holds a&nbsp;position that is difficult to fill.</p><p>Additionally, the bill requires annual agency reports to Congress&nbsp;describing the effectiveness of agency telework policies. The Government Accountability Office must evaluate the accuracy and thoroughness of each report&nbsp;in an accompanying report to Congress.</p>]]></summary-text>
        </summary>
    </item>
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        <dc:language>EN</dc:language>
        <dc:rights>Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.</dc:rights>
        <dc:contributor>Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress</dc:contributor>
        <dc:description>This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.</dc:description>
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</BillSummaries>
