Trump's Telework Order to Federal Bureaucrats Could Be His Reagan

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One of President-elect Donald Trump’s Day One priorities will be instructing all of the 2.1 million career federal workers — most of whom work most of the time from home — to either show up at their official duty stations or else find new jobs outside of government.

Federal employee unions, which have been working feverishly since Trump’s massive November 5 reelection victory, have already secured at least one agreement, with the Social Security Administration (SSA) that protects that agency’s employees’ teleworking access for another five years.

Earlier this month, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) demanded that President Joe Biden instruct federal department and agency heads to stop any similar negotiations that may be underway. In a report she released at the same time, the Iowa Republican said:

“Bureaucrats have been found in a bubble bath, on the golf course, running their own business, and even getting busted doing crime while on taxpayers’ time,” the report stated. “Members of President [Joe] Biden’s own Cabinet claimed to be on the clock while being out of office and unreachable.

“Just 3 percent of the federal workforce teleworked daily prior to the pandemic. Today, 6 percent of workers report in-person on a full-time basis, while nearly one-third are entirely remote. Most federal employees are eligible to telework and 90 percent of those are. Some come to the office as infrequently as once a week.”

And thus it’s no wonder that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) noted in his latest “Festivus Report,” that, among more than $1 trillion in examples of federal spending he believes are wasteful or unnecessary, the federal government spent an estimated $10 billion in 2024 “maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings.”

Just to put a basic context on this issue, readers should understand that the average federal worker is paid more than $106,000 annually. By comparison, the average annual household income in America in 2023 was $80,610, or almost 33% less than the government worker.

To be sure, there are circumstances in which working from home can improve the productivity of individual workers, but Joe Lunch Box, who doesn’t work for the government, knows for the most part that he has to show up at his workplace regularly, and if there are times he can work from home, he has to make sure the boss knows he got something productive done.

Federal employee unions, especially the largest one, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), will do everything in their power to frustrate, blunt, and delay Trump’s forthcoming Executive Order. They will put huge roadblocks in the path of the incoming White House administration.

Leaders of AFGE and other federal worker unions might want to refresh their memories about the fate of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) when that union sent its members out on strike. Reagan had been endorsed during the 1980 campaign by PATCO.

But on Aug. 3, 1981, when the union called a strike against the federal government, more than 12,000 PATCO members walked off their jobs. Reagan gave the strikers 48 hours to come back to work, warning them that there would be no negotiations and no amnesties.

Those who didn’t return to work were fired. Not long afterward, PATCO became the first federal employee union ever to be decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). Air traffic controllers today are represented by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-leaders of Trump’s forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are targeting federal teleworking among their priorities in seeking $2 trillion worth of wasteful and/or fraudulent federal spending to be eliminated.

They can expect federal employee unions, vigorously backed by the wider labor movement in the private sector, Democrats in Congress, and the Mainstream Media to fight Trump’s effort to reform the federal government by, among much else, reforming the federal workforce.

That opposition will be in the courts, in the media, in Congress, in academia, and everywhere else union leaders and federal worker advocates can command an audience. Reagan held firm on behalf of the law that made it illegal for federal workers to strike against the public. Will Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy be as tough as the Great Communicator was?