Musk, Ramaswamy float 5-day office week for federal workers

NEW YORK - Mr Elon Musk and Mr Vivek Ramaswamy – US President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to lead the newly formed task force to review government spending – said they will push for eliminating work-from-home policies for federal workers, an idea that could spark clashes between the new administration and government employee unions.

“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Nov 20.

Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy said

the new Department of Government Efficiency

– which will be set up outside the government, but advise the White House on budget and spending issues – would help reduce the federal workforce by compelling employees to resign. In the op-ed, they said they would serve in their roles as “outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees”.

A full return to office for federal employees could shore up the local economy in Washington, since post-pandemic office vacancy rates remain high and economic activity in the city’s downtown has plateaued at 68 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, according to a 2023 report from the Downtown DC Business Improvement District.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser has asked President Joe Biden to bring employees back to the office – or relinquish office real estate – in a bid to revive the city’s downtown. 

There are more than two million federal workers and over 400 agencies across the US. Eighty per cent of federal employees work outside of Washington, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

If officially embraced by Trump, the return to office has the potential to set off a wave of fights between the White House and the labour unions that cover employees at many federal agencies. Some workplaces have longstanding telework arrangements that pre-date the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, has panned work-from-home policies, telling CNBC in 2023 that tech workers should get off the “moral high horse with the work-from-home”. BLOOMBERG