Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have started taking critical steps aimed at increasing government efficiency which has been learnt could first of all target nearly two-thirds of federal workers who are still approved to work from home 18 months after the pandemic ended in the US.
It was noted that the workers who still work from home have left a vacant office space in downtown Washington, the vacant space has been a cause of concern and frustration to Mayor Muriel Bowser as the space has been expensive to maintain in the past years and months. While speaking with reporters last week she explained that she had asked for a meeting President-elect Donald Trump and that top on her agenda is pushing federal workers to return to downtown Washington.
Bowser stated that the government will try to make an effort to make sure that our federal workforce is back to work is one big thing, adding that she wants a partnership with the federal government to bring “vibrancy back to our town.
In a document obtained from the Office of Management and Budget, telework-eligible federal workers are in the office 60% of the time and about 10% of all workers are fully remote. All told, the U.S. has roughly 2.2 million federal workers.
When Trump was declared winner of the US election while speaking with Tucker Carlson Ramaswamy stated that he wanted to take a “jackhammer and a chain saw to the federal government, starting by forcing civil servants to return to work.
He explained that the individuals don’t go to work he noted one doesn’t even have to talk about being in a mass firing, a mass exodus. Just tell them they have to come back five days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ramaswamy estimated that would lead to a 25% thinning out of the federal bureaucracy right there.
Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents more than 700,000 workers, explained that more than half of the federal jobs could not be attended to while working from home. She also noted that the claims made by Ramaswamy and Musk’s claims are exaggerated.
She noted that some of the persons who could not work from home include, all the health care workers at VA hospitals and clinics and corrections officers at the Bureau of Prisons, she added that the Border Patrol agents federal air marshals and people who inspect slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.”
As some of the workers have resulted in working from him it has been indicated that the cost of excess federal office space has become a concern. in a document released last year by the Government Accountability Office disclosed that 17 of the 24 largest federal agencies used on average only 25% of their office space.
It was disclosed that the education department was at a lower rate of 16% which is a sector that is on top of Musk and Ramaswamy’s list for elimination.
It was learnt that 98% of Education Department employees were allowed to perform their roles from home while they work remotely, according to the OMB. One of the agencies with the lowest office use rates, only 9%, was the federal government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management.
Simon stated that some of the benefits of allowing some persons to work from home include helping the federal government employ and retain a talented workforce that, despite lower pay, has to compete with the private sector.
In August 2023, in a push to get civil servants back in office, President Joe Biden directed all federal workers to spend at least half of every two-week pay period in the office.
Ironically, the federal government urged working from home long before the coronavirus pandemic. Behind the 9/11 attack in 2001, President George W. Bush saw it as a way to provide workers could stay online and work during crises.
In 2004, a little over 750,000 federal workers were qualified to work from home. Since then, the figure has nearly duplicated to 1.3 million.
