WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that he plans to fire any federal employees who don’t physically return to their offices once his new administration begins and pledged to challenge in court a Biden-era agreement allowing for remote work.
“If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and personal residence.
“Somebody in the Biden administration gave a five-year waiver of that, so for five years people don’t have to come back into the office,” he added. “It’s ridiculous. It was like a gift to a union, and we’re obviously going to be in court to stop it.”
The Social Security Administration and more than 40,000 workers represented by the American Federation of Government Employees union reached a deal earlier this month that would allow most of those employees to continue working remotely two to five days per week.
Ending remote work across the U.S. government is likely to be a recommendation from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s initiative to cut government spending dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk has long been critical of working from home, which he has called “morally wrong.”
Around half of the country’s 2.3 million federal employees work fully in-person, while the other half are eligible for remote work, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Around 10% are fully remote.
