Newly Formed DOGE Seeks to Force Federal Workers Back to the Office

A new administration is set to take over the White House in January, bringing with it plans to significantly overhaul the federal workforce.

In the meantime, government employees face uncertainty, as rumors circulate that scores of federal workers could lose their jobs, and entire agencies might be dismantled in the months ahead.

What does seem certain, though, is that the Trump administration’s plans involve putting an end to large-scale remote work throughout the federal government.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy—who, along with Tesla CEO Elon Musk will head up a newly formed unit “that will work to slash federal government spending, waste and regulations”—has already made clear the Department of Government Efficiency’s intentions with regard to remote work.

For example, Ramaswamy told Tucker Carlson shortly after the election that he aims to take a “jackhammer and chainsaw” to the federal government, “starting by forcing civil servants to return to work,” NBC News reported.

“They don’t go to work,” he told Carlson in a podcast interview. “You don’t even have to talk about you’re in a mass firing, a mass exodus. Just tell them they have to come back five days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.”

Taking that step would lead to a “25% thinning out of the federal bureaucracy right there,” Ramaswamy said.

In a Nov. 20 op-ed that Musk and Ramaswamy penned for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the pair predicted that compelling federal employees to return to the office five days a week “would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”

And, “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 August of this year, the Office of Management and Budget released a report showing that the approximately 1.1 million federal employees eligible for telework were already spending more than 60% of their time in the office. According to the same report, about 10% of all federal workers were fully remote.

Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union that represents more than 700,000 government workers, noted to NBC News that more than half of the federal government’s roughly 2.2 million employees do not qualify for remote work.

Simon also contended that allowing some federal employees to work at least partially from home helps the government compete with the private sector for talent, despite not being able to offer the same type of compensation.

Some federal workers say that being forced to return to the office would indeed drive them to seek other opportunities outside of government.

For example, one federal employee requesting anonymity recently told CNN that such a mandate would mean adding a two-to-three hour commute to their daily schedule, and would likely put an end to their 10-plus year government career.

“The stress would be through the roof,” said the anonymous General Services Administration employee, adding that remote workers often work even when they’re sick or scheduled to be off, despite not receiving overtime pay.

“I am at the point where, if I had to commute, I would resign,” the employee told CNN. “I would take this as a sign to move on and start a new chapter in my life.”