Billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy articulated their vision for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), proposing that President-elect Donald Trump should mandate government employees to report to the office five days a week, rather than allowing remote work.
These comments from the right-leaning entrepreneurs were made while they presented the controversial “DOGE plan” in an op-ed featured in The Wall Street Journal. They stated, “Mandating federal employees to be present in the office five days a week would likely lead to a significant number of voluntary resignations, which we would welcome: If federal employees are unwilling to come to work, American taxpayers should not subsidize their Covid-era privilege of working from home.” This piece was published on Wednesday. Following his victory in the 2024 US presidential election, Trump appointed Musk and Ramaswamy to oversee the newly established department, which is set to be dissolved by 2026. The two individuals, lacking prior government experience, further advised Trump to consider “large-scale firings” and to relocate government agencies away from Washington, D.C. Musk has emphasized that he requires in-person attendance from employees at SpaceX and Tesla, framing it as a moral imperative. “People should abandon the misguided notion of moral superiority associated with working from home,” Musk remarked in 2023.
However, is this truly significant? A report from the Office of Management and Budget indicates that approximately 50 percent of federal employees are ineligible for remote work. Among those eligible, 60 percent are engaged in their duties at physical job sites. “These statistics suggest that the telework rates within the federal workforce are generally comparable to those in the private sector,” the report noted.
In an interview with CNN, Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents over 800,000 federal workers, stated: “The suggestion that federal employees, as a whole, are not working in person is simply not supported by data.”
In previous instances, Republicans have criticized the Biden administration regarding the federal government’s stance on telework. This included a provision in a spending bill that required the White House to provide additional details on workplace flexibility, as reported by The Guardian. Consequently, in April of the previous year, the Office of Management and Budget released a memorandum instructing federal agencies to “significantly enhance meaningful in-person work at Federal offices … while still employing flexible operational policies as a crucial strategy for talent recruitment and retention.”
Nevertheless, numerous federal employees expressed to CNN that the mandate for five days of in-person work could interfere with their current lifestyles and may not be practical. Some workers indicated that they would need to travel two to three hours to reach the nearest office. In contrast, Musk and Ramaswamy argue that this approach could lead to cost savings for the federal government. With a strong electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court, DOGE has a unique opportunity to implement structural reductions within the federal government. They are prepared to face opposition from established interests in Washington and are confident in their success.
