As Donald Trump prepares to return to work at the White House, it seems that tens of thousands of federal employees should also expect to head back to their offices in the new year.
The president-elect took the opportunity of his first major news conference since being elected 47th President of the United States to express his dissatisfaction of the union deal that permits such workers to work remotely.
If Trump’s wishes are fulfilled, it would echo the attitude taken by his key ally and world’s richest man Elon Musk. Tesla and X, formerly Twitter, are both among the companies who have ended remote working over the last couple of years.
Rescinding a Gift to the Union
Addressing press questions on Monday covering topics as diverse as vaccines and foreign policy to tariffs and TikTok, Trump slammed the decision to allow federal workers as “terrible” and “ridiculous”.
An agreement has only just been reached between the Social Security Administration and the American Federation of Government Employees union to allow around 42,000 workers to carry out their duties on a remote or hybrid basis until at least October 2029.
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“If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” said Trump, calling the agreement a gift to the union.
He also intimated that his government would pursue a court order to reverse its effect.
Working Like a DOGE
Trump’s comments are unsurprising, following statements made on the subject by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy since their appointment as co-leaders of the president-elect’s new Department of Government Efficiency – also known as DOGE.
They said in November that they were seeking to “thin federal bureaucracy by 25%”, and were looking at a return to work mandate as one way to prompt voluntary redundancies (not disimilar to Dell’s streamlining strategy earlier in the year).
Subsequently on X, Musk blamed the waste of taxpayer dollars on “literally thousands of empty buildings” left vacant by federal staff teleworking.
“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” – Elon Musk
The Great Return to Office
Fully remote government jobs aren’t the first to be under threat as the COVID pandemic becomes a further distant memory, and are unlikely to be the last.
Outside of X, Tesla and Dell, the highest profile example is probably Amazon ending hybrid work and demanding staff return to the office. 2024 has also seen the likes of PWC, Nothing and Rockstar issue return to work mandates to their employees.
But other big tech companies have bucked the trend and reasserted their intention to allow staff to work remotely. For example, Microsoft told staff that it wouldn’t force a five day return to office, while streaming giant Spotify vowed to treat staff like grown-ups on the issue.
