The union that represents thousands of federal employees declared that it will oppose any attempt by President-elect Donald Trump to thwart an arrangement reached under the Biden administration that would permit thousands of federal employees to continue working remotely.
“It’s ridiculous,” Trump stated Monday in reference to the telework protections pact that Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley signed with the American Federation of Government Employees prior to his resignation last month, extending them until 2029.
Speaking to reporters at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Trump referred to the agreement as “very terrible” and claimed it was getting in the way of his plans to manage the federal workforce, which included ending remote work. He declared that he will try to get the regulation overturned in court.
At his first press conference after the election, Trump stated, “If people don’t return to work or return to the office, they’re going to be dismissed. Someone in the Biden administration gave a five-year waiver of that, so for five years people don’t have to come back into the office.”
He said, “They just signed this thing.” He went on to say, “It was a gift to a union, and we will obviously be in court to stop it.”
AFGE National President Everett Kelley stated later on Monday that the union would oppose any attempt to remove those safeguards.
“The federal government’s collective bargaining agreements are legally enforceable and binding. We have faith that the incoming administration will fulfill its commitments to uphold legitimate union contracts. We will be ready to defend our rights if they don’t, Kelley stated.
“Telework and remote work are tools that have helped the federal government increase productivity and efficiency, maintain continuity of operations, and increase disaster preparedness,” he stated.
The White House opted not to respond. A request for comment was not immediately answered by the SSA.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two of Trump’s top advisers who are expected to spearhead initiatives to cut expenses and improve government efficiency, have made ending work-from-home a main aim.
After Trump won the election, Ramaswamy told Tucker Carlson that he thought cutting off remote work would result in a large number of resignations.
Just tell them they have to come back five days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Ramaswamy told Carlson, predicting it would lead to a 25% thinning out of the federal bureaucracy right there.
In his statement, Kelley said, Rumors ofwidespread federal teleworkand remote work are simply untrue.”
“More than half of federal employees cannot telework at all because of the nature of their jobs, only ten percent of federal workers are remote, and those who have a hybrid arrangement spend over sixty percent of working hours in the office,” he stated.
Trump touted the work Musk and Ramaswamy have been doing at the news conference, saying they’re aiming to “eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud. And I can only tell you, I ll give you a little early report, they re finding things that you wouldn t even believe. Therefore, we hope to save perhaps $2 trillion.
Proponents of workers returning to the office include Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat. She told reporters last month that more federal workers going back to work in the city would bring vibrancy back to our town.
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