Could DOGE’s Remote Work Ultimatum Work?
The reality is, for many federal workers, commuting into the office five days a week is simply unrealistic. Several government employees told CNN this policy would upend their lives, with one worker having moved to the midwest during Covid, and another living around two to three hours away from their offices in Washington DC.
Unfortunately for these workers, their inability to return to physical office premises could likely put their jobs at risk, which would in turn help Ramasway and Musk meet their target of thinning federal bureaucracy by “25%”.
However, despite Musk’s and Ramaswan’s assertion that federal employees are taking advantage of “Covid-era remote privileges”, the majority of government workers are already working on-site, 100% of the time. To be specific, 80% of regular working hours are spent in-person, and only 10% of federal workers are fully remote, according to a report from the Office of Management (OMB) and Budget.
“The implication that federal employees writ large are not working in-person is simply not backed up by data and reality,” Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said in a statement.
Kelley also believes that any changes in working conditions that could impact union contracts, would need to be negotiated through a collection bargaining process. This call is echoed by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), which represents 110,000 federal workers. They told the Wall Street Journal that if a strict RTO mandate was implemented, they wouldn’t hesitate to challenge it with legal action.
Time and time again, tech CEOs have dismissed the needs of their employees by demanding them back into the office full-time. Often times for Musk, these efforts have been successful. However, the calls from these labor unions suggest that if DOGE’s strict ultimatum comes to fruition, government employees won’t be afraid to fight back.
