Musk and Ramaswamy call for ending work-from-home for federal employees

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy suggested Donald Trump could require government employees to be in the office five days a week as part of an effort to trim the size of the federal workforce.

“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,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a Wednesday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Trump has tapped both men to lead the newly created department of government efficiency.

The two men, who have previous experience in government, also suggested Trump would undertake “large-scale firings” and relocate government agencies outside of Washington.

Musk requires employees at SpaceX and Tesla to work in person and has described it as a moral issue.

“People should get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” he said in 2023.

Around 50% of federal government workers are not eligible for telework, according to a report released earlier this year from the Office of Management and Budget. Those who are eligible for telework, spent 60% of regular working hours at in-person job sites.

“These numbers indicate that the Federal workforce has telework rates generally in line with the private sector,” the report said.

Everett Kelley, national president for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents more than 800,000 federal workers, told CNN: “The implication that federal employees writ large are not working in-person is simply not backed up by data and reality.”

Republicans have pushed the Biden administration over the federal government’s approach to telework, including a provision on a spending bill that the White House provide more information on workplace flexibility.

In April 2023, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum telling federal agencies to “substantially increase meaningful in-person work at Federal offices … while still using flexible operational policies as an important tool in talent recruitment and retention”.

Some federal workers told CNN that a five-day in-person work mandate would upend their lives and not be feasible. One employee who spoke with the outlet works for the Library of Congress and took a $12,000 pay cut when they moved to the midwest during the Covid-19 pandemic and bought a home. Another employee told CNN they would have to commute two to three hours to the nearest office.

In their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy sketched out other ways they believed the federal government could save money, including audits, and improved procurement. They also suggested pushing to allow the president to block expenditures by Congress, a move they acknowledged would likely require a ruling from a US supreme court Trump has shaped in his favor.

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail,” they wrote.