OPINION:
Since the federal government decided to allow rationality to prevail and everyone to proceed with their lives after the pandemic, there has been a quiet war between corporate leadership and those employees squarely ensconced in the laptop class over whether and to what extent working from home should be embraced.
For many, it is a contest in which there is no one for whom to root. No one really likes or trusts senior management of any organization (nor, as a rule, should they). On the other hand, it is difficult to support the laptoppers, who, for the most part, come off as — and probably are — spoiled children. Most of us remember 2019, when 40 hours a week in the office was the minimum.
For those who deal with the federal government, the issue is even more fraught.
Alfred DelliBovi, who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, was fond of pitching his idea that the way to solve the problems with the federal workforce was to guarantee them step and grade increases, while requiring them to stay home. He reasoned that it would ultimately result in less disruption and lower costs to the nation.
No doubt he had a point.
But there are certain jobs for which one needs to be present. One such job would be inspector at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
No university or college offers a degree in nuclear regulation and inspection. Those skills take several years on the job to develop, primarily through formal training, mentoring, and firsthand observation. This is no small problem, as one-quarter of the NRC workforce is eligible to retire right now.
Unfortunately, at the moment, both the union and the NRC career leadership have decided that giving job-seekers the freedom to work from their favorite coffee shop is the key to hiring new employees. The NRC staff has proposed a new and aggressive work-from-home policy — “Presence with Purpose,” whatever that means — which would reduce requirements to be in the office from four days per pay period (roughly two weeks) to two days per pay period. Under this scheme, a “day” is redefined to be as little as four hours.
The NRC’s excessive timelines for licensing of new and advanced reactors, fuel designs, etc. — now measured in decades — are already the poster child for bureaucratic red tape. Increasing the number of NRC employees who work from home won’t make that better.
Ironically, one of the recommendations from the report that looked at the incident at Three Mile Island back in 1979 was that the NRC offices should be consolidated to a single location so that expertise could be shared and expanded. Increased working from home would, obviously, turn that recommendation on its head.
Given the importance of nuclear energy in meeting today’s energy security and national security imperatives, the NRC’s success and efficiency is paramount in licensing new and advanced reactors and partnering with power plant operators to ensure the continued safe operation of the U.S. nuclear fleet.
Having the workforce that is supposed to be helping to ensure the safety of American nuclear energy into the next century sitting at home while the hard-earned knowledge of decades of regulation and safety practices decays is not a good idea.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to reject this proposal.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies.
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