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.
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.
