Musk, Ramaswamy advice Trump to end work-from-home provision for federal employees

While elucidating their vision for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that President-elect Donald Trump should ask government employees to be in the office five days a week, instead of working from home.

The remarks from the right-leaning entrepreneurs came while they laid out the infamous “DOGE plan” in an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal. “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,” the pair wrote in the piece which was published on Wednesday.

After winning the 2024 US presidential election, Trump tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to lead the newly formed department which will dissolve by 2026. The two men, who have no experience in running the government, went on to suggest to Trump that he should undertake “large-scale firings” and relocate government agencies outside of Washington.

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Musk has noted that he required 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,” the billionaire said in 2023.

But does it really matter?

According to the report released by the Office of Management and Budget, around 50 per cent of federal workers are not eligible to work from home. Out of those who are eligible for it, 60 per cent spend their 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.

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

In the past, Republicans have pushed US President Joe Biden’s 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, The Guardian reported. In light of this, in April last year, 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”.

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However, several federal workers told CNN that the five-day in-person work mandate could disrupt their current lifestyle and might not be feasible. Some employees said that they would have to commute two to three hours to the nearest office. However, Musk and Ramaswamy believe the federal government could save money this way.

“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.

With inputs from agencies.