POPA-employees are NOT under a return to in-person work order
A lot of people are confused by the return to in-person work order so we reiterate:
POPA-covered employees are NOT under a return to in-person work order.
POPA-covered employees have a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
POPA-covered employees include ALL patent examiners (probationary included) as well as approximately 600 additional employees in various parts of the office including Patents, CIO, CFO and others.
There are many terms for various telework including remote, full time, partial, routine, 50 mile, TEAP, etc. These are all telework programs. No one covered by POPA has a return to in-person work no matter how their telework agreement is referred to. Continue to work the telework program you have been approved to work.
Non-production time
We are getting reports of employees’ time sheets not being validated if non-production time is claimed in 1 hour increments. Employees are being told to claim the time in an increment less than 1 hour. THIS IS A BREACH OF OUR CBA.
Production employees in POPA take non-production time (other time) in one-hour increments. Management proposed to change it to 15-minute increments during CBA negotiations but they withdrew that proposal and agreed to go with the past practice of one-hour increments.
Employees need to claim approved non-production time in one-hour increments. If your supervisor is not permitting this, then you need to let POPA know. Also, let us know if you are being called into short meetings and denied non-production time. Send an email describing your situation to popahelp@popa.org and include “Other time” in the subject line.
Please note: leave can be claimed in 15-minute increments.