Trump administration advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy came on Wednesday to end remote work for federal employees, calling the practice a “privilege” left over from the pandemic.
Two tech industry figures floated the idea in the opinion piece It was published online in The Wall Street Journal and said it would be a simple tool to reduce the federal workforce.
“Requiring federal workers to come to the office five days a week will result in a wave of voluntary terminations, which we welcome: If federal workers don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t be paying them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” the two men wrote.
It could affect more than 1 million federal employees. About 1.1 million federal civilian employees, or 46% of civilian employees, are eligible for some amount of telecommuting. August report From the Office of Management and Budget. The report says that 228,000 workers, or 10% of workers, are in remote positions without expecting to work in person on any regular or recurring basis.
The Biden administration ordered In 2023, federal agencies will “significantly increase meaningful personal work,” but he also left some flexibility, citing operating costs such as office space, the need to hire “top talent” and other factors.
Musk and Ramaswamy are co-chairs of what President-elect Donald Trump is calling the Department of Government Efficiency, though their role is advisory and won’t be an official department unless Congress passes legislation creating it. The acronym, DOGE, is a reference to an internet meme and cryptocurrency that Musk has promoted for years.
The proposals in the opinion are some of the first concrete policy proposals the pair has advocated for their new roles.
In the run-up to Trump’s election and during the transition, Musk has been an increasingly present and influential figure in Trump’s orbit, repeatedly meeting with lawmakers and world leaders with Trump.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has taken remote work seriously at his companies since the Covid-19 pandemic began to subside. Musk announced return to office policy In 2022, he ordered workers at Tesla and SpaceX to return to work a minimum of 40 hours per week, although his decree was then hampered by a lack of space and resources. CNBC reported on this.
The future of remote work for office workers is hotly debated. And some companies Like Amazon have joined Tesla and SpaceX in calling back workers, other companies are using remote work as a recruiting and retention tool. seems to have some staying power.
Some unionized federal employees criticized Musk and Ramaswamy, saying they didn’t know what they were doing.
“It’s clear that Musk and Ramaswamy don’t understand how the federal workforce works or operates,” said Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. statement about DOGE’s work in general.
The two tech figures are “making absurd claims about government waste and embarrassing federal employees,” Erwin said. His union says it represents 110,000 federal workers.
The two also proposed other ways to cut federal jobs, including “large-scale layoffs” and “relocating federal agencies from the Washington area,” they said. They also floated a number of other ideas for cutting federal spending and rolling back government regulations, citing recent Supreme Court precedent that they said would give Trump broad latitude.