(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump is putting an end to remote work for federal employees, with one of his first executive orders bringing the federal workforce back to the office full-time.
Half of the federal workforce has been allowed to work remotely. It’s part of a larger culture shift that occurred during the pandemic and for many workers, the desire to remain remote has stuck.
But that has left large federal facilities like the Department of Energy empty, with fewer than 1% of the office spaces being used according to the Public Buildings Reform Board.
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In addition to bringing workers back to the empty desks, Trump says he wants to sell unused federal buildings.
Research shows there are nearly 8,000 empty buildings that cost taxpayers about $8 billion to maintain. That’s on top of another $7.7 billion spent on energy bills to keep them running.
A 2023 Government Accountability Office report said that 17% of the 24 federal agencies are using as little of 9% of federal buildings and only as much as 49% of their building’s capacity.
Several unions have pushed back, including one that represents 800,000 federal workers.
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“President Trump’s order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons,” said American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley. “It will remove hundreds of thousands of federal jobs from the non-partisan civil service and make them answerable to the will of one man.”
While some employees are fine with heading back to the office, others are facing major upheaval, having arranged responsibilities like childcare around a work-from-home schedule.
