Romney, Manchin Introduce Bill to Get Federal Workers Back into the Office

Well that's one way to overcome the hurdles of firing a gubmnt employee...fat needs to be trimmed anyway

 

Nah, I think it is an old person thing about not liking change. Cant stop progress. I mean... who prints stuff still?

 

Have to disagree with “any engineer”.

A good bit of design work, particular in early stages can be done remote given adequate internet capacity. Collaboration and integration are certainly less efficient remotely. And engineering resolution on early production is a must for in person.

The question for all companies really is; is adding more labor to account for the reduced efficiency a better value than maintaining office space. There is no single answer to that question. Each company and project are different with significantly different variables.

 

Nobody wants to buy it, because everyone else's employees are working from home too.

 

I went fully remote as a pharmacist over 3 years ago and would refuse to ever go back to a retail setting in any capacity. Not worth my mental health to deal with that stress. Dumb as hell bill, thankfully I’m not a federal employee but I feel for them if this passes, which is probably will because Republicans hate American workers.

 

Eventually almost all pharmacists will be replaced with robots and AI, no errors on medication.
Never sick can fill 50 rx in an hour.

Questions will be handled by the AI with an overseer.

 

How does that work logistically?

 

Well you can count pills at home just as easily as in an office

 

Sorry, I wasn’t singling out “any engineer”, i was just listing off job roles off the top of my head that were doable to work from home. I just happened to coincidentally list engineer first. I wasn’t implying it was the most likely to work from home, or anything of the sort.

Obviously some engineers need to be “on-site”, that's one job role that is probably more sensitive to different phases than some of the others, especially those that are tied to projects. Actually engineering itself is probably more “project” oriented than most other professions. So I’d imagine if a person is industrial engineering, they might need to show up and be at the factory site in person to supervise all the processes - likewise if a person is an environmental or land dev engineer, there will be professional work that will require the engineers to be on the site. Wasn’t implying otherwise, I was just listing “work from home” jobs in the most generic terms possible.

 

I bet the bill meets many of the objections voiced in this educational thread, and won't make it to the floor.

 

I do DUR reviews, pre-verifications before the scripts go into the dispensing process to make sure everything was processed correctly by the technician, and then also help with audit and insurance reviews from the back end. We basically do all the behind the scenes work and take the majority of the work off the retail operations so they can turn their focus elsewhere. You would be surprised how much pharmacy related work can be done remotely that doesn’t require you to in a store or hospital setting.

 

Lol. They cant even get AI to cook you a hamburger so I think dispensing life saving/threatening medicine is a bit down the road. Automation filling containers has been around for 50 years. If that's all it was I suspect it would be done by now. They are automating registers and such though so maybe less pharmacy support is more likely.

 

How do you think the bottles get filled in a factory?

Electronic RXs are already mostly being done.

It will happen before you know it.

For the record I’m not suggesting Pharmacists should be replaced or disparaging their importance

 

Publix has Central Pharmacy that does a ton of automated dispensing with machines, but the machines still make mistakes that require a human to go back and manually fix. Fully automated pharmacy work is years away for something as important as patient health.

 

Doctors and nurses also make tons of mistakes. It’s crazy to me some of the powers nurses get, considering how many have “diploma mill” type degrees and basically don’t know anything about anything. I’d be highly inclined to NOT trust a process that automates the fulfillment of orders.

Of course in a true “AI” driven world then the doctor/nurse also wouldn’t be needed to diagnose and dispense appropriately dosed medicine, but we are miles away from there imo.

 

Mr. McMurphy, your prescription is ready!

 

Just posted a separate thread on this before I thought it might fit here. This seems to be a good argument for this bill although I'm not sure otherwise what I think about it

 

Let's rate their own arguments (FTR from two government employees who work 3 day weeks with one entire month off, most of a couple of other months off, and extended breaks around every holiday, who have to be called in for things like voting to not shut down THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT...):

1. “It has been nearly a year since President Biden formally ended COVID-19 public health emergency declarations, yet most of our federal office buildings remain empty—wasting millions of taxpayer dollars every day." Pretty much Bogus. If they are wasted, figure out a way for them to be productive. Just filling them up with employees doesn't make them non-wasted. In fact, if you can't prove that having the employees in those buildings makes them more productive than elsewhere, THAT would be the waste. Using up resources, and not just the buildings, but travel, time, fuel, etc. to achieve the same or even less is the definition of waste.

2. "Federal workers have a unique obligation to connect with the citizens they serve, and exclusively remote work hinders this essential collaboration." Huh? I mean, maybe. Or maybe not. How is a job that can't be done remotely being done remotely? I'd have to hear specifics on this one. I suppose some jobs could be done better face to face. But I don't see how that is "unique." Seems to me that any job is subject to that test. But the bill doesn't seem to account for specific jobs, it is just sweeping mandates top to bottom. Again, if it can be done as well remotely as it can in person, then by definition it is a waste to make that person travel.

3. "Local businesses in West Virginia and across the country are also suffering from a lack of consumer traffic during the work days, which is negatively impacting our local economies." And finally the truth. While it isn't the fed's job to supply revenue streams to ancillary businesses, this one is at least undoubtedly true. This basically forces fed workers into transferring some of their wealth to others though. Bummer for the person responsibly traveling less, eating (likelier healthier) at home, and spending less money on bad office clothes they pull off like they're on fire at the end of the work day, but good for all those other things.