The Defense Department and other federal agencies have 30 days to implement President Trump’s order to end telework and remote work, the Office of Personnel Management said on Wednesday.
[Nearly 62,000, or 8 percent, of the Defense Department’s 783,000 civilian employees teleworked or worked remotely in April and May of 2024, OPM reported last year. About 10 percent of all federal workers do so.]
On Trump’s first day in office, he issued a 65-word memo ordering agencies to require employees return to in-person work “full-time.” But because the document referred only to terminating “remote work agreements,” it caused some confusion among agencies and government-watchers.
Telework and remote work are two distinct workplace flexibilities at federal agencies. Federal workers who telework commute to the office at least twice per biweekly pay period—or more, depending on their job responsibilities—while remote workers’ official duty station is typically their home and they are not expected to travel to a traditional federal facility on a regular basis.
“We don’t have a lot of clarity about what exactly they mean here, especially on the return to office,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service on Tuesday. “It’s a very short EO that just doesn’t offer many answers.”
In a memo Wednesday night, Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell gave agencies a 5 p.m. Friday deadline to revise their agencywide telework policy to reflect that employees are expected to “work full time at their respective duty stations.” It allows for exemptions in the case of an employee disability, other qualifying medical condition or “other compelling reason certified by the agency head and the employee’s supervisor.”
Ultimately, employees will have 30 days, or until late February, to “fully comply” with the order, with notable exceptions for the aforementioned exempt employees and for employees covered by collective bargaining agreements with provisions governing telework. Last fall, Trump deputies and House Republicans expressed outrage when then-Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley signed a contract with the American Federation of Government Employees locking in existing telework policy until 2029, though management still may temporarily suspend or amend its availability.
Ezell also offered strategies for cancelling remote work agreements: for example, if an employee’s official duty station is more than 50 miles from any existing agency office, the agency should simply move their duty station “to the most appropriate agency office based on the employee’s duties and job function.”
The State Department has already begun enforcing Trump’s order. In a memo to employees obtained by Government Executive, Secretary Marco Rubio said the department will “strive for 100% in-office attendance.” The department will cancel all existing telework arrangements, except for situational telework, on March 1, and remote workers are expected to return to in-person work by July 1.
The new policy makes exceptions for employees with reasonable accommodations for disabilities, and will continue to honor Domestic Employee Teleworking Overseas agreements. But the memo’s language—that agreements will remain “until the conclusion of the sponsoring employee’s assignment overseas”—implies an uncertain future for the DETO program, which offers remote work positions to the spouses of active duty military service members stationed overseas and has been a bipartisan priority in the fight against military spousal unemployment.
During the presidential transition, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy touted ending telework as a means to encourage federal workers to quit, akin to a reduction in force.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted the move.
“To just take a blanket brush across and say, ‘Get rid of telework,’ is going to hurt millions and millions of Americans who depend on these people doing their jobs,” he said. “There are many ways that telework is very, very effective, and when you say, ‘Get rid of telework,’ it just means you want to take a dagger to the heart of federal workers and the federal government.
Eric Katz contributed to this report.
