Billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said this week they support requiring all federal employees to return to the office five days a week.
The two men, set to lead President-elect Donald Trump’s nonofficial Department of Government Efficiency, fully endorsed a return-to-office policy for all federal employees, adding that it would also be an excellent way to cut the federal payroll in the process.
“If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying home,” Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy wrote.
Both men have already voiced their support for five-day in-office workweeks. Mr. Ramaswamy told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this month that the policy would immediately result in a 25% headcount reduction and Mr. Musk was one of the first business leaders to call his employees back to the office after the pandemic, insisting they are more productive and collaborative than when teleworking.
The call for 2.3 million civilian federal workers to return to in-person work full-time coincides with a wave of return-to-office mandates in the corporate world. Despite the popularity for workers of remote work or hybrid work, CEOs at Amazon, Disney, Nike and JP Morgan have called their employees back to the office. Importantly, Mr. Musk led the charge to get employees back into the office when he acquired Twitter in late 2022.
According to an Office of Management and Budget survey released in August, 61.2% of the work hours of the 1.1 million telework-eligible federal workers were spent in person in the office or in the field. Including federal jobs where telework was not feasible, 79.4% of work hours were spent in person in May 2024.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy also laid out the goals of the so-called DOGE. According to the piece, DOGE employees will identify the minimum number of workers needed within a federal department to perform “constitutionally permissible” functions, and erroneous regulations and staff will be cut.
The scale of the incoming cuts is difficult to measure, but Mr. Musk has promised to eliminate over $2 trillion from the annual federal budget and has said he will trim the number of agencies down from more than 400 to 99.
The process of cutting thousands of federal employees could be made easier with the reinstatement of Schedule F, an executive order that Mr. Trump made during his first presidential term. The order allows the president to convert thousands of government employees into “at-will employees,” making them easier to fire.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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