Federal employees who worked fully or partially remote for the last nearly five years are coming to terms with the fact they will now have to return to the office.
And if they don’t comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order and the policies his agencies enact in response, experts warn thousands could face the wrath of the man with the catchphrase: ‘You’re fired.’
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said employees have ‘abused’ telework and it’s one of the ‘biggest areas of waste’ in the federal government, according to a clip obtained by DailyMail.com.
She detailed specifically how most of the employees at the Veterans Administration (VA) do not come into the office every day, and lamented that there is an ever-increasing backlog of disability claims and hotline calls that go unanswered for days.
‘We are paying federal workers for a glorified vacation, because they’re not working from home,’ Ernest said during an upcoming podcast episode of the Standpoint with Gabe Groisman.
‘One VA employee who was in charge of some of these hotlines – he actually was on a Zoom call from his bathtub,’ said Ernst, who is chairwoman of the Senate Small Business Committee. ‘You’re not actually working if you’re taking a long, hot soak in a bubble bath.’
This March 2023 example is often used by Republicans to exhibit why returning to the office is necessary. The VA worker posted a story to Instagram showing him in a bathtub with the caption: ‘My office for the next hr.’
Even Democrats, many of whom were massive proponents of work-from-home policies well into the second year of the pandemic, are getting sick of the new era of working arrangements and warn workers who have slacked off for years that their vacation is now over.
‘We are paying federal workers for a glorified vacation, because they’re not working from home,’ Sen. Joni Ernest says during an upcoming podcast episode of the Standpoint with Gabe Groisman
Former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff for Policy David Dorey told DailyMail.com: ‘I think even the Biden administration was getting a little bit fed up with what was going on.’
‘You saw some movement towards return to work, at least a little bit, and then a lot of resistance, but I think that the current President is not going to put up with that,’ he added.
Dorey, who is now head of Labor & Employment for Liff, Walsh and Simmons but worked in the executive branch of government through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Trump has ‘made clear – you come to work, that’s how it goes, and if you don’t, then there’s going to be consequences, including up to termination.’
The president issued an order on day one of his second term last week directing his agencies to establish and enforce a return-to-office plan, which was to be communicated to their employees by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, January 24.
They have 30 days to present their plans and implement the change.
DHS sent its employees a memo last week ordering them to immediately come back to the office.
They provided exceptions for those with a ‘physical inability’ to come to or work from the office and said it also depends on if there is enough ‘adequate office space’ to accommodate for the workforce.
Washington, D.C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is pleased with Trump’s executive order requiring his executive agencies to implement a return to office plan over the next month.
The nation’s capital has long felt the brunt of the federal workforce conducting their business at home and syphoning off money that used to be injected into D.C.
‘The entire downtown of D.C. has essentially been gutted by federal employees not going to work for four years,’ Dorey said.
‘All of the services that those employees use when they go to work were just not being used and so businesses went out of business,’ he said. ‘The commercial space, I think, is way underutilized compared to where it should have been.’
Downtown Washington, D.C. has become a ghost town during the week after one-tenth of the federal workforce remained fully remote well after the COVID-19 pandemic ended. Pictured: A nearly empty D.C. metro car
Restaurants, shops and the metro system all suffered massive losses when thousands of workers never went back to full-time in-office work after they were first sent home in March 2020.
Bowser, in a surprise to those who know her thoughts on Trump, promised to collaborate with the new Republican administration ‘to deliver for D.C. and the American public.’
In August 2024, the White House Office of Management and Budget released a report on the onsite vs. offsite federal workforce. It found that one-tenth of federal employees work off-site full time.
As of May 2024 there were a total of more than 2.27 million federal workers in the 24 Cabinet departments and independent agencies. This accounts for all but two percent of federal government employees.
Of those, the report found that 1.22 million work onsite full-time while roughly 1.06 million are eligible for off-site work.
A total of 228,000 are full-time remote workers.
These thousands are expected to flood back into the district in coming weeks.
However, federal workers now used to their new working arrangements find Trump’s new order a tough pill to swallow.
Many have adapted their lives over the last five years to their remote or telework situations, and some have even relocated out of the commutable area to D.C. and would either have to move back or find a different job.
Former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff for Policy David Dorey told DailyMail.com if federal workers don’t go back to the office, ‘there’s going to be consequences, including up to termination’
Dorey says there are likely to be administrative challenges at different agencies from employees or groups of workers who want to push-back on the requirement to come to the office. He doesn’t believe they will be successful.
‘That administrative process takes forever – it’s horribly backed up, and doesn’t have the ability to kind of preliminarily enjoin anything,’ Dorey explained.
‘So if someone says, ‘I’m not going to work tomorrow in person,’ they can’t just run off through that process and then get somebody to tell the President or an agency to stop,’ he added. ‘It couldn’t go fast enough.’
And in the interim, that employee would be required to comply with the new policies, which would be to work full-time in person or else face whatever consequences are detailed by the government agencies.
In this case – likely termination.
