President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ending remote work for Federal employees and ordering them to return to the office “on a full-time basis.”
The order directs the heads of all departments to “as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”
The order does give agencies some flexibilities, noting that the department and agency heads can “make exemptions they deem necessary.”
In the first official statement issued by his team on Monday afternoon, the White House lists the return-to-office mandate as part of President Trump’s “drain the swamp” agenda.
“President Trump is planning for improved accountability of government bureaucrats. The American people deserve the highest-quality service from people who love our country,” the document says.
“The President will also return Federal workers to work, as only 6 percent of employees currently work in person,” it adds.
However, Trump’s claim that 6 percent of employees work in person conflicts with Federal agency data. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a report to Congress in April that found “Federal employees returned to in-person work at rates comparable to the private sector by 2022.”
According to OMB, 54 percent of the Federal government’s 2.28 million employees work fully on-site. The remaining 46 percent of the Federal workforce is telework eligible, with only 10 percent of Federal employees – 228,000 – in fully remote positions.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telework served as an important tool for Federal employees to deliver mission-critical services safely.
Over the past few years, the Biden administration has expanded telework options for Federal employees, while encouraging an increase in “meaningful” in-person work.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) removed the COVID-19 governmentwide operating status on May 15, 2023 – meaning the pandemic no longer drives how and where Federal employees work.
In anticipation of Trump’s executive order, former OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver told reporters last week that telework should not be a “one-size-fits-all approach.” Trump had previously warned that Federal workers who don’t return to in-office work will be fired.
“I think that applying a one-size-fits-all approach will result in dramatically bad effects on those occupations where the occupation itself is largely performed from home,” Shriver said. “It should be driven by what is the best arrangement to accomplish the agency’s mission.”
The executive order also drew opposition from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) – the largest Federal employee union – which issued a statement on Monday encouraging the Trump administration “to rethink its approach.”
“To justify this backward action, lawmakers and members of President Trump’s transition team have spent months exaggerating the number of Federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said. “The truth is that less than half of all Federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers who are eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations.”
“Providing eligible employees with the opportunity to work hybrid schedules is a key tool for recruiting and retaining workers in both the public and private sectors,” he added. “Hybrid work has been so successful that many agencies have been working to consolidate unused office space and sell off properties that are costly to maintain – meaning there may no longer be enough office space to accommodate an influx of on-site workers.”
