The tax returns bank records etc. . . that sounds to me like those are beyond the scope of an employer audit. I am pretty sure labor law restricts the matter as follows.
Step 1)
Employer has one hand tied behind his back. (no checking bank records, no checking personal equipment etc.) Audits probabably feel unpleasant and invasive, but there are legal limits to what an employer can do. If an employee is using his boss’s equipment, computer, phone, ISP etc. is neither hard not expensive to document a pattern of using them inappropriately.
Failing an audit is not a criminal offesne, but it can be a firing offense incl losing one’s retirement benefits.
Step 2)
If/when such an audit reveals a pattern then it becomes a criminal matter and crime investigators can exmaine a lot, including personal equipment, person credit card use, personal bank records, etc…
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Bottom line: Any gov’t employee who feels he may not “survive” an audit should quit now. You can’t fail an audit you never take, and without failing an audit there won’t be enough evidence to get to step two.
I have to imagine libs cheer when contractors are prosecuted for the same fraud offenses. Do I imagine too much?
The government has a lot of experience,
a lot of practice,
doing time card audits of private contractors
(who are routinely caught and criminally prosecuted).
My guess is they are looking for those people who work two jobs where the hours overlap, which is probably against the terms of employment as opposed to a statute.
And let’s not read too much into Trump saying the employee has to prove he didn’t work two jobs. I’m sure he just meant to say he thinks there were employees double dipping when they were supposed to be working their government jobs, and they’re going to find out.
This is just Trump intimating remote government workers were robbing the American people…continuing to build the narrative.
A year after a U.S. Patent and Trade Office employee bilked the agency for $25,000 while he played golf, a scathing inspector general’s report found that employees racked up $18.3 million in unsupported hours.
The audit was requested following an August 2015 report detailing how a USPTO employee billed the agency for 730 teleworking hours that he spent local bars and a driving range.
The report found that following the February 2015 teleworking policy’s implementation, 8,100 patent examiners racked up more than 137,000 work hours that were unsupported . . .
Investigators also focused on some 296 examiners that accounted for 39 percent of the agency’s unsupported hours in the nine-month period. During that span, those examiners claimed more than $4.8 million in salary and bonuses . . .
You act like people work a job out of the goodness of their hearts. You do understand that these people are compensated, many quite well, by taxpayer dollars, right?
The employee doesn’t have to as you pointed out. However, their electronic history is accessible. If a federal employee bound by agreement to NOT work outside their assigned duty does? They’ve risked losing a probable good paying gig with sweet benefits. You know, a greedy dumbass.
I think the complaint here is asking employees to prove the are NOT DOING something is pretty onerous. Isn’t it the bosses job to watch out and prove that you are DOING something instead?
I think what is happening is, Trump learned something - that some employees abuse WFH and work a second job when they should be working their first - and then all of his supporters have to pretend that his new discovery is actually new to the whole world. Trump figured this out! No one knew any of this before he said this thing!
Or, it could simply be…as we’ve all known this stuff has been happening and has all but been ignored over past administrations, Trump is simply trying to follow through on his promise of hammering down on waste, fraud abd abuse.
If I’m on the clock while working from home, spending that time working another job is not allowed. Has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with the company rules. If I were to do that in a private company, I would be fired on the spot. Likely from both companies.
