The nation’s biggest federal union is pushing back against claims by President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters over teleworking for civil servants.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal and Washington city workers, said assertions that staffers are abusing work-from-home flexibility are serving as cover for Republican lawmakers to try to tear down the government.
The clash over telework is expected to be one of the major battles for the incoming Trump administration as conservatives push for the civil service to return to the office.
“Exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and portraying those who do as failing to show up for work is a deliberate attempt to demean the federal workforce and justify the wholesale privatization of public-sector jobs,” AFGE said on its website.
The union added, “AFGE believes that facts matter, and that lawmakers should be guided by the facts when making decisions that affect the lives of their constituents.”
At issue is a report on telework released by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) last week, which she shared with other senators. The report is expected to bolster efforts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an outside group led by tech mogul Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, to have federal employees back in the office five days a week.
“For years, I have been tracking down bureaucrats relaxing in bubble baths, playing golf, getting arrested, and doing just about everything besides their job,” Ernst said in a statement. “Federal employees need to return to work, but if they don’t want to, I will make their wish come true.”
In her report, the Iowa senator said 90 percent of federal employees telework, while only 6 percent report to the worksite full time. In addition, close to one-third of staffers work remotely.
“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” Musk said on social media last week, referring to Ernst’s report.
Those figures, however, don’t match findings from an Office of Management and Budget report that telework was not as nearly as widespread among the federal workforce as Ernst’s study implies.
OMB found 54 percent of the government’s 2.28 million civilian employees were on-site full-time due to their job requirements. Meanwhile, 46 percent were eligible to telework, while 10 percent were in remote positions.
In addition, those telework-eligible staffers spent 61.2 percent of their working hours in the office. For all federal employees, 79.4 percent of their working hours were in person, according to the report, which was released in August and required under an appropriations package passed by Congress earlier this year.
Press officials in Ernst’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
The Biden administration also has been pushing federal employees to return to the office. They set a threshold of staffers spending 50 percent of their working hours on-site.
Some energy and environmental agencies surpassed that bar. The Department of the Interior’s telework-eligible employees spent 74.5 percent of their regular hours doing in-person work, while it was 57.1 percent for the Energy Department.
EPA did not meet that goal. Its telework-eligible staff were in the office for 35.8 percent of their working hours, according to the OMB report.
Also at stake in the telework debate is federal office space going unused. Employees worked from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, and many have not returned to the worksite.
EPA is in the process of assessing its own real estate in its sprawling downtown Washington headquarters. The agency plans to release buildings left empty once that review is done next year.
The General Services Administration is also disposing of federal offices.
The government’s landlord announced last week that it would dispose eight properties in a bid to “right-size” its holdings. That move will reduce the federal real estate portfolio by 1.5 million square feet and save more than $475 million over 10 years.
