Federal employees are bracing for considerable changes as President-elect Donald Trump prepares for his return to the White House. Many are concerned about possible large-scale layoffs and substantial alterations to the federal workforce.
Advisers to the upcoming Trump administration, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, proposed on Wednesday the elimination of remote work for federal employees, deeming it a residual “privilege” from the pandemic. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire duo suggested that this approach could effectively reduce headcount for government agencies.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the opinion piece.
Last week, Trump announced his plans to create a Department of Government Efficiency, co-led by the pair, with the goal of reducing regulations, eliminating jobs and reorganizing federal agencies.
During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Ramaswamy stated that he anticipates “certain agencies to be deleted outright,” although he did not indicate which specific departments he aims to cut.
“We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated,” said the pharmaceutical entrepreneur.
As DOGE is not a formal government department and can only provide recommendations, and since presidents cannot unilaterally abolish agencies or Cabinet departments without Congressional approval, Musk and Ramaswamy are pushing to end remote work in federal agencies as a means to reduce the workforce through natural attrition.
Their potential sweeping mandate could impact over one million federal employees. According to the Office of Management and Budget, approximately 1.1 million federal civilian workers, representing 46% of the civilian workforce, qualify for some level of telework. Around 228,000 employees, or 10% of the workforce, hold remote positions with no requirement to work onsite.
In April 2023, President Joe Biden’s administration directed federal agencies to “substantially increase meaningful in-person work at Federal offices, particularly at headquarters and equivalents, while still using flexible operational policies as an important tool in talent recruitment and retention.”
The memorandum outlines that as agencies evaluate their work environments within major operational units, they should conduct assessments of organizational health and performance. These assessments can help identify how telework and other operational policies positively or negatively affect the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission. Factors to consider include: impact on customer experience and service quality; security implications; operational costs; management of physical property; investments in network capacity and communications infrastructure and the agency’s ability to attract and retain top talent.
For nearly three decades, the U.S. government has been a leader in the telecommuting movement.
However, it appears that Musk intends to manage federal agencies in a manner similar to how he operates his own companies. Following his acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022, he significantly reduced the social media platform’s workforce by 80% and imposed a ban on remote work, overturning the prior policy that allowed employees to work from anywhere, which had been put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
By Jack Kelly Senior Contributor – forbes.com