Trump orders federal workers back to office 5 days a week

Trump begins second term with flurry of executive orders

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President Trump is requiring millions of federal employees to return to the office.

In an order issued Monday, the White House instructed all U.S. government departments and agencies in the executive branch to end remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work on a full-time basis. Department heads can exempt some workers from the requirement.

The executive order was one of a blizzard of actions announced by Mr. Trump on the day of his inauguration, including directives on the economy, immigration and climate change. 

The executive order was among multiple directives targeting the federal workforce of 2.3 million that, along with the return-to-office mandate, includes a hiring freeze, revamped hiring rules and other moves to make career senior employees easier to fire. 

The White House called the steps necessary to curtail what Mr. Trump and his supporters view as a “deep state” who fought his actions during the president’s first term. 

“There have been numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership,” stated one of the executive orders signed by the president on Monday evening. “Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service.”

Critics view the touted-in-advance policy as an effort to topple the heart of civil service, in which people are hired based on merit and can’t be arbitrarily dismissed. 

The government jobs included professional employees who work as border patrol officers, meat inspectors and those overseeing clean-air regulations. 

Union pushback 

The return-to-office directive is expected to face a fight from federal unions, some of which have remote work written into their contract.

One union that represents government workers bashed the mandate as returning to the patronage system that oversaw the federal workforce until the end of the 19th century.

“Every American has a stake in ensuring that federal employees remain free to carry out the mission of the agencies that employ them without fear of political interference,” Everett Kelly, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia, said in a statement. 

Kelly — whose union represents employees with the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration, among other agencies — also called Mr. Trump’s directives “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.” 

The National Treasury Employees Union filed suit against the president’s “Schedule F” executive order, a directive that makes it easier for the Trump administration to fire career government employees.

Mr. Trump’s order is “contrary to congressional intent,” according to the complaint filed late Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

NTEU represents workers in 37 federal agencies and offices, including staff at the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services. 

“The American people deserve to have day-to-day government services in the hands of qualified professionals who are committed to public service and stay on the job regardless of which political party holds the White House,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement. “Yesterday’s Executive Order is a dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago, which is why we are suing to have the order declared unlawful.”