Billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, are nominated to run Donald Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE.)
They plan to end remote work across agencies as a way to help reduce the federal workforce through attrition. A five-day in-office work week will become a requirement for all federal employees.
The proposal could impact more than a million workers. Currently, not all federal workers are required to be in the office five days a week.
There are 1.3 million federal workers approved for telework, according to the Office of Personnel Management. About 10% of federal employees are working fully remote.
The proposed remote working ban is among the first actual policies laid out for DOGE.
This could make employees quit, helping the new Trump administration thin out the federal workforce ranks and save money.
Both Musk and Ramaswamy have recently publicly criticized employees working remotely across the government.
They wrote: “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them.”
While nothing is final, early priorities include an effort to immediately end remote work across federal agencies.
However, DOGE may not have the legal power to order federal employees back to the office.
Everett Kelley, president for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents 800,000+ federal workers, commented:
“The implication that federal employees writ large are not working in-person is simply not backed up by data and reality,”
