News & Politics

Can Trump End Telework for Federal Employees?

His executive order will not be the last word on the subject.

President Trump signed some executive orders at Capital One Arena Monday. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

President Trump ordered an end to telework arrangements for federal workers on his first day in office Monday as part of a blizzard of executive orders. Ending remote work is a priority for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser as well—she views the pandemic-era boom in work-from-home arrangements as devastating to DC’s downtown core.

There’s quite a bit of daylight between what Trump and some of his fellow Republicans claim about the prevalence of such arrangements and what the US Office of Personnel Management wrote in a report to Congress last year: A little more than half of all federal workers are required to work in person five days a week already, and the rest spend about 60 percent of their time in the office. (Here’s a good summary.)

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last year, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy argued that they “would welcome” resignations by federal employees over telework policy: “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they wrote.

Of course, nothing is that simple. Government telework arrangements predate the pandemic, and many public-service unions have contracts that allow it. That won’t change overnight. And restricting telework will hinder recruiting efforts, the American Federation of Government Employees argues. That may not be a negative for the new administration.

Senior editor

Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.