During COVID, government employees across the country were able to begin working from home and now, years later, they don’t want to give that up.
Trump wants to put an end to this. He expects people to actually show up to their offices to do their jobs. Can you imagine that?
Trump is serious about this too, and wants to fire employees who won’t return to working in-person. He absolutely should. if these people don’t need to show up for work, what are taxpayers paying them for?
The Washington Times reports:
Trump wants to fire federal workers who don’t return to office, calls telework deal ‘ridiculous’
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday vowed to fire federal employees who don’t come back into the office, threatening to file a lawsuit challenging a Biden administration labor contract that cemented remote work benefits for thousands of government workers.
“If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” Mr. Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
“And somebody in the Biden administration even gave a five-year waiver of that so that for five years, people don’t have to come back into the office,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. So it’s’ like a gift to the union.”
Mr. Trump was referring to a remote work provision included in a contract negotiation between the Social Security Administration and 42,000 workers represented by the American Federation of Government Employees. That contract locked in workers’ freedom to be in the office for as little as two days a week, depending on the job.
One of the issues here is that we have government office buildings all over the place that are essentially empty, yet taxpayers are expected to heat and maintain them. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy of the DOGE are already looking at this.
Federal government agencies are using, on average, just 12% of the space in their DC headquarters. The Department of Agriculture, with space for more than 7,400 people, averaged 456 workers each day (6% occupancy).
Why are American taxpayer dollars being spent to maintain empty… pic.twitter.com/qqhlqb3gRT
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) November 21, 2024
Most federal workers don’t physically show up, yet the cost of maintaining & providing energy for govt office buildings is $15BN/year (not counting billions more spent on office furnishings). The government owns 7,967 vacant buildings. This is nuts. Sounds like a job for DOGE.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 23, 2024
Literally thousands of empty buildings, not just in America, but around the world, paid for with your tax dollars!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2024
Many of these folks are going to find themselves out of a job and they will have no one to blame but themselves.
