Many federal employees are unhappy with President Trump’s demand that they return to the office five days a week. The Trump administration’s mandate stated that Americans “deserve the highest-quality service from people who love our country.” Federal workers say that comment suggests they aren’t hardworking or loyal. Last week, administration officials released more details on return-to-office plans, a document that demanded agencies terminate termination all remote-work arrangements. The document said that remote work is “glaring roadblock” to increasing government performance, adding that most federal offices appear to be “virtually abandoned.”
The Office of Personnel Management issues a yearly report on telework entitled “Status of Telework in the Federal Government Report to Congress.” The most recent report – 245 pages in length – shows how much better all metrics are when federal employees work remotely, including saving the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year on real-estate and related costs.
The White House is telling federal agencies to push forward with return-to-office plans despite union agreements that guarantee telework, a move bound to land some aspects of the policy change in court.
Drew Friedman, writing in the publication Federal News Network, analyzed the results of that publication’s survey of employees on the topic of returning to the office. Some federal employees unequivocally said said they believed there were political motivations behind Trump’s return-to-office executive action this week.
“This has nothing to do with productivity or results and is all political,” one respondent wrote. “Federal employees currently feel completely demoralized by this administration.”
“This is a baseless and punitive effort to target federal employees and reduce the size of federal agencies through resignations,” another respondent wrote.
In addition, the majority of workers said that suffer under a blanket return-to-office mandate, citing a variety of reasons from the addition of commute times, to deterioration of work-life balance, to employee recruitment. The survey also found that productivity would likely take a drop precipitously.
Should they be forced back, a small number of disgruntled federal workers wrote in posts on Reddit that they plan to work less and “relax” more. Workers said they would use more leave, find more distractions in the office to lower productivity, and take advantage of the nice open-office environment for extensive socializing with co-workers.
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