WASHINGTON, D.C. (BISNOW) — Trump’s executive order directs agency and department heads to “terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”
It says the move should take place “as soon as practicable” and that department and agency heads “shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”
The decision to make this one of his Day 1 actions makes it clear the return-to-office push is a priority for Trump.
What is less clear is exactly how this push will play out with a federal workforce that has resisted being forced back to the office.
The nation’s largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 D.C. and federal workers, pushed back against the executive order in a statement Monday night, calling the move a “backward action” that reverses more than a decade of precedent of hybrid work.
“Rather than undoing decades of progress in workplace policies that have benefited both employees and their employers, I encourage the Trump administration to rethink its approach and focus on what it can do to make government programs work better for the American people,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in the statement.
Kelley highlighted various benefits of hybrid work, including disaster preparedness, operational efficiency, recruitment and retention, and the ability to allow the federal government to shed unused office space.
Kelley said that due to consolidating and shedding federal office space, “There may no longer be enough office space to accommodate an influx of on-site workers.”
Twenty-nine percent of government employees are protected by union collective bargaining agreements, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of those unions reached agreements with their agencies during the Biden administration to enshrine remote work arrangements. The AFGE chapter representing 42,000 Social Security Administration workers reached an agreement in December to lock in telework policies until 2029.
Michael Fallings, a federal employment attorney with law firm Tully Rinckey, told Bisnow Thursday those agreements should protect federal workers represented by those unions from the return-to-office mandate.
“I don’t believe [the executive order] can supersede a union contract,” Fallings said.
“Those employees who have collective bargaining agreements to allow them to work remotely, it should not impact them,” he added.
The goal of the directive is to make employees resign, Fallings said.
“They’re trying to remove employees. I think that’s been the overall goal, to kind of reduce the size of the federal government,” he said.
