When the Trump administration announced a return-to-office mandate this week, it stated Americans “deserve the highest-quality service from people who love our country.”
Federal employees like Frank Paulsen say that comment suggests they aren’t hardworking or loyal.
Paulsen, 50, is the vice president of the Local 1641 chapter of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a federal workers union. He works as a nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Spokane, Washington, and has been teleworking three days a week since 2022. His main job involves processing referrals to send patients to community health care partners, something he can do remotely.
Paulsen said he has been a federal employee for 22 years and is a disabled veteran himself. And he doesn’t think anyone he works with isn’t measuring up.
“I do not believe that I would subscribe to that belief at all,” Paulsen said. “My co-workers are very diligent about getting the work done.”
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order mandating all federal agencies order their employees back into the office full time “as soon as practicable” alongside a directive to end remote-work arrangements except as deemed necessary.
Late Wednesday, administration officials released a more detailed directive demanding the termination of all remote-work arrangements, alongside a statement that it’s a “glaring roadblock” to increasing government performance that most federal offices are “virtually abandoned.”
The GOP has long bemoaned the state of the federal bureaucracy. But the Trump administration appears to be making good on promises to overhaul it, in part supported by Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest donor, who is now serving as a semiofficial adviser.
“This is about fairness: it’s not fair that most people have to come to work to build products or provide services while Federal Government employees get to stay home,” Musk wrote on X following the order’s signing.
Though it represents just a sliver of the nation’s overall workforce, the U.S. government is the country’s largest employer, with more than 2 million civilian employees. Some 162,000 workers alone are located in Washington, D.C., according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and federal workers make up over 40% of the city’s workforce.
But most federal workers, like Paulsen, actually work in other parts of the country: Only 7.56% of federal employees work in D.C.
Yet whatever their location, many workers like Paulsen are responding to Trump’s RTO order with concern. There are practical worries: Paulsen has questioned whether the office he works in, which the VA leases, has enough seats for everyone employed by his division. Another VA employee, who requested anonymity because she didn’t want her program targeted, echoed space concerns, especially in settings where sensitive medical information is discussed.
Paulsen said he is planning for a return to the office five days a week no matter what.
“The guidance we give our employees is basically, don’t put yourself in a position to get fired,” he said.
Morale has never been lower on one metastatic cancer research team within the VA, an employee there told NBC News. She requested her name not be used because she didn’t want her team to lose funding. Two people on her team are remote workers and the employee said she works from home two days a week, doing administrative tasks and data analysis.
Guidance was changing by the hour on Thursday, she said. With a contract that renews every three years, the employee said she was told by management at one point to start looking for new jobs, then was later alerted by a higher-up that she fell into the VA’s list of exemptions.
The fate of her remote colleagues and telework options remains unclear, she said. They work with veterans across the country, and the team worried for those whose treatments could be canceled without them.
“It just doesn’t feel good to go into work knowing that you don’t know if you’re going to have a job in a few months,” she said.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who works in Washington, D.C., said he and his colleagues are making backup plans. They all have telework arrangements, and some work remotely — hourslong drives from the nearest federal office. He views the executive order as an attempt to force people to quit. He wanted to remain anonymous because he fears retaliation.
“The feeling is there’s an ax over our heads,” he said.
The Trump administration has said that just 6% of federal employees now work in person. But according to an August report from the Office of Management and Budget, among federal workers eligible for telework — and excluding those who are fully remote — roughly 61% of work hours are now in person.
Among agencies, the Department of Agriculture had the highest percentage of in-person work hours, at 81%; while the Environmental Protection Agency had the lowest, at about 36%.
The Biden administration had already been keeping an eye on return-to-office implementation as the Covid-19 pandemic waned, with regular reports being issued on how much telework was being used by each federal agency.
In December, an OPM survey found 75% of telework-eligible employees had participated in telework in fiscal year 2023, though that was 12 percentage points lower than in fiscal year 2022.
The report said there had been positive results from a hybrid setup.
“Agencies report notable improvements in recruitment and retention, enhanced employee performance and organizational productivity, and considerable cost savings when utilizing telework as an element of their hybrid work environments,” it said.
A GOP-sponsored House Oversight Committee report this week accused the Biden administration of exaggerating in-office attendance, citing “physical and anecdotal evidence,” while accusing it of taking a “pliant” posture toward federal union groups as they sought more generous telework arrangements.
Even as it praised Trump’s desire to improve federal workforce accountability and performance, the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan think tank focused on government effectiveness, said in a statement that the return-to-office order was an example of overreach.
“While any move toward making the government more responsive to the public should be welcomed, it said, the actions announced in Trump’s workforce-related executive orders put that goal “farther out of reach.”
On a press call with reporters this week, Partnership CEO Max Stier said telework is necessary to attract more qualified employees who already tend to enjoy higher salaries in the private sector.
In a follow-up statement, Stier warned of the dramatic impact the order will have on career civil servants’ personal lives.
“The affected employees are everyday people who have to support themselves and their families, and the abrupt and rushed approach chosen here will have a traumatizing impact on not just them but their colleagues who remain in their roles serving the public, as well,” Stier said.
Social media forums frequented by government workers have also lit up, with many raising questions about how agencies were expected to comply given that many have been downsizing their office space.
Even before the pandemic ushered in widespread work-from-home policies, 2010 legislation cited telework for federal employees as a way to reduce office costs and promote resilience in emergency situations, as long as employees continued to meet performance expectations.
The Wall Street Journal reported the government was looking to sell off many of its commercial real estate holdings. NBC News could not independently confirm the report.
Unions representing federal employees have slammed the new policy, saying it would undermine the government’s effectiveness and make it harder for agencies to recruit top talent.
“Rather than undoing decades of progress in workplace policies that have benefited both employees and their employers, I encourage the Trump administration to rethink its approach and focus on what it can do to make government programs work better for the American people,” Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.
The AFGE’s contracts with major government firms, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, establish procedures for telework and remote work in accordance with the 2010 law. The union said the order “doesn’t appear to violate any collective bargaining agreements,” and whether it would file a lawsuit depends on how the policy is implemented.
“If they violate our contracts, we will take appropriate action to uphold our rights,” the AFGE said in a statement.
The NFFE, Paulsen’s union, likewise said the executive orders would “impair critical services” and viewed the termination of remote work arrangements as an attempt to force employees to quit.
“I am worried about this administration violating those contracts with regard to telework,” Randy Erwin, the national president of the NFFE, told NBC News.
One sector that would stand to benefit from the mandate is local business in downtown Washington, D.C.
Gerren Price, the president of the DowntownDC Business Improvement District, which covers an area to the east of the White House, said only about half of the office space within its boundaries is occupied. Price said 27% of that office space is owned and operated by the federal government.
From coffee shops to dry cleaners, local businesses that used to cater to a nine-to-five crowd have closed, Price said.
Leona Agouridis, the president of the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District, which encompasses an area between the White House and Dupont Circle a mile to the north, said the neighborhood hasn’t felt as busy as it did before the pandemic.
“This will go a long way in bringing back vibrancy that we have lost over the last five years,” Agouridis said.
At the Tune Inn, a restaurant and bar that has served D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood since 1947, general manager Stephanie Hulbert is bringing back a federal worker lunch discount, which the establishment had done away with after the pandemic because no one used it. She knows this policy will change many federal workers’ lives, but hopes they can help each other out.
“I really hope that when these workers do come back, they come and support the small businesses that need it in D.C.,” Hulbert said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to get the morale up to where it needs to be.”