Musk and Ramaswamy want to force federal workers back to the office. But can they?

Among the many changes expected to shake up the government under the new Donald Trump administration, requiring all federal employees to return to the office five days per week could very well occur. But it’s likely to face challenges from unions.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire entrepreneurs recently bestowed government advisory jobs, said they have several ideas to drastically cut the federal workforce and budget through their newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

One way they could inspire change is by suggesting Trump mandate the approximately 2.28 million employees return to the office five days per week – something they claim will “result in a wave of voluntary terminations”.

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“If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

Currently, more than half of government employees work fully on-site, with approximately 80 percent of regular working hours spent in-person, according to a report from the Office of Management (OMB) and Budget. Only 10 percent of federal workers are fully remote.

Much like companies within the private sector, each government agency creates its own work-from-home policy. But OMB expects each agency to spend 50 percent of work hours in person for those who can.

Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union representing 80,0000 federal employees, said Musk and Ramaswamy’s suggestion is misguided.

“The implication that federal employees writ large are not working in-person is simply not backed up by data and reality,” Kelley said in a statement.

Despite this, Ramaswamy claimed mandating in-person working would thin “25 percent” of the federal bureaucracy.

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Both Ramaswamy and Musk have expressed opposition to work-from-home policies. Musk said it hurts communication in the workplace while Ramaswamy claimed it promotes outsourcing jobs to other countries.

But in the OMB report, the agency said hybrid work environments promote “organizational health” and work-life balance.

Kelley said any changes in working conditions that could impact union contracts would need to be negotiated with the union through the typical collective bargaining process.

Similarly, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), which represents 110,000 federal workers, told the Wall Street Journal it has consulted with its legal team and plans to push back on any mandate.

“We’re rallying them and getting prepared for a really, really big fight,” Randy Erwin, the union’s national president told the newspaper.

The NFFE and AFGE have both cautioned against massive cuts to the workforce. For one, it would lead to large reductions in government benefits and services that millions of Americans rely on. Additionally, the federal government is the largest employer of veterans and cutting 75 percent of the workforce would leave more than 480,000 vetearn unemployed.