This report provides an update on issues affecting federal managers. As always, I encourage you to visit www.fedmanagers.org on a regular basis for more information on these and other matters.

Also, be sure to look for the FMA Grassroots Update, where we offer links to action letters and FMA-PAC matters we do not address in the Washington Report. The grassroots newsletter is sent exclusively to non-governmental email addresses to avoid any Hatch Act violations. If you are not receiving it, contact the national office to provide your non-governmental email address.

Please feel free to provide feedback any time by emailing Adam Kay at akay@fedmanagers.org or by calling the National Office at (703) 683-8700. Thank you for your membership in FMA. It’s an honor to represent your interests before Congress and the administration.

One of the ways FMA communicates what federal managers need to Congress is by meeting with Members of Congress and their staffers. FMA National President Craig Carter visited Washington, D.C. to advocate for FMA priorities at meetings with a variety of House and Senate offices, as well as with Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kiran Ahuja.

A bipartisan group of Congressional Representatives have introduced new legislation to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision, or WEP. This unfair rule adversely impacts federal employees who spent part of their career in the private sector, by reducing their pensions to account for what they can draw from Social Security. Per Government Executive, “The Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act (H.R. 5834), introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, would replace the windfall elimination provision with a new formula that would more accurately reflect the proportion of a retiree’s career spent in government compared to their time in the private sector, and it would provide a $100 monthly rebate for retirees—and a $50 rebate each month for surviving spouses—ages 60 and older currently impacted by the windfall elimination provision.”

On December 1, the House Government Operations Subcommittee held a hearing titled “The Future of Federal Work,” to “examine the federal government’s recruitment and hiring policies and explore strategies to help build the next generation of public servants.”

Congress is set to approve the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week. The House passed it on December 7, and the Senate is expected to pass it in short order. The compromise includes repeal of the two-year probationary period at the Department of Defense (DOD), despite the fact that a study Congress ordered on the efficacy of the policy is still pending. FMA National President Craig Carter issued the following statement about the NDAA:

FMA has worked throughout 2021 to restore the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to a fully functional status, including support of President Biden’s three nominees moves to fully staff the MSPB, ensuring that feds receive full protection and due process under the law. All three nominees have been cleared through the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and await a full floor vote on the Senate for their long-overdue confirmation. Regrettably, no votes are currently scheduled on the Senate floor to confirm them and restore MSPB.

As of November 24, 2021, 92 percent of the federal workforce had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, with a total of 97 percent of the federal workforce in compliance with the vaccine requirement issued by President Biden when accounting for granted or pending medical and religious vaccine waivers. The administration decided against immediate enforcement of suspensions and other penalties, including permanent termination of employment, until after the holidays.

President Biden’s President’s Management Agenda (PMA) was the subject of December’s “Hear It From FMA” column, which is published on a monthly basis by FEDManager.com. There’s a lot to like about the PMA, and FMA looks forward to working with the administration and others to help achieve its broad goals. In this month’s “Hear It From FMA,” which published on December 7, we drill down on hiring reform, the importance of managers associations, and the importance of data for guiding decisions that impact the hiring process. To read the full article, click here.

Continuing Resolutions (CR’s) and the specter of shutdowns are regrettably an evergreen article in the Washington Report. For this article, we decided to take a different approach to the issue. The following is an interview FMA’s Government Affairs and Communications Associate Adam Kay conducted with FMA National President Craig Carter.

Does your chapter have a Consultative Agreement or a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with your agency or installation? If so, the National Office would like to see it! FMA is pursuing several agency-level Consultative Relationships at the national level, including with the Department of Defense. OPM policy mandates that agencies establish Consultative Relationships with managers organizations who abide by a list of strict requirements (all of which FMA conforms to), and who represent sufficient numbers of managers to enable a productive dialogue. As the largest organization representing federal managers, FMA certainly qualifies. We’re asking for copies of your installation-level Consultative Agreements because the more Consultative Agreements we have on file, the more easily we can secure agency-level Consultative Relationships.

FMA’s Winter Recruitment Campaign has officially started! This campaign offers new members at participating chapters who join between December 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022, a $50 incentive. Here’s the catch: this campaign is only open to chapters who choose to opt-in to the campaign. Currently, the list of officially participating chapters is: FMA Chapter 3 (Norfolk Naval Shipyard), FMA Chapter 6 (Portsmouth Naval Shipyard), FMA Chapter 14 (Puget Sound Naval Shipyard), FMA Chapter 19 (Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard), FMA Chapter 34 (McAlester Army Ammunition Plant), FMA Chapter 125 (Corpus Christi Army Depot), FMA Chapter 148 (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation), FMA Chapter 170 (Naval Weapons Center), FMA Chapter 252 (Fort Bliss), and FMA Chapter 275 (Social Security Administration).

Where can you get valuable training, tell your elected representatives what you need from them, and have fun with your friends and fellow federal managers all at the same time?

Answer: the 2022 FMA National Convention. Join us in Alexandria from March 27 to March 30, 2022. This year's offerings will include everything from informative training sessions to happy hours where you can meet managers from across the federal government. We've even been promised that at least one of our Region Directors will be wearing a chicken suit in honor of the region who recruits the most new members this year.