The Blubber

EElon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a newly established task force on government spending, have proposed eliminating work-from-home policies for federal employees—a move likely to ignite tensions between the administration and government unions.

“Mandating that federal employees return to the office five days a week would prompt a wave of voluntary resignations, which we would welcome. If federal workers aren’t willing to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize their Covid-era work-from-home privileges,” Musk and Ramaswamy argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday.

The duo will co-chair the Department of Government Efficiency, a task force advising the White House on budget and spending issues while operating independently of the government. In their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy emphasized that they would serve as "outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees."

A full return to in-person work for federal employees could boost Washington, D.C.'s economy, which has struggled to recover since the pandemic. Office vacancy rates remain high, and downtown activity has stalled at just 68% of pre-pandemic levels, according to a 2023 Downtown DC Business Improvement District report. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has urged President Joe Biden to either bring federal employees back to the office or free up unused office space to help revitalize the city.

Currently, more than two million federal workers are spread across over 400 agencies, with 80% based outside Washington, D.C., according to the Partnership for Public Service. Many federal workplaces have longstanding telework policies that predate the pandemic, and any mandate for a full return to the office could trigger significant pushback from labor unions representing federal employees.

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been a vocal critic of remote work policies. In 2023, he told CNBC that tech employees need to “get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home.”