6 months ago
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(NewsNation) — President-elect Donald Trump has warned national employees who person been moving connected a distant ground that if they privation to support their jobs, they volition request to return to their fixed bureau spaces.
However, forcing authorities employees backmost into the bureau whitethorn not beryllium arsenic casual arsenic threatening them with termination, a Republican lawmaker tells NewsNation.
U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said helium anticipates that arsenic the recently formed Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) prepares to tackle authorities waste, a downsizing of the national workforce whitethorn beryllium required.
Trump’s run committedness to unit national workers backmost to the bureau comes astatine a clip erstwhile 17 of the 24 national bureau buildings successful Washington are astatine 25% capableness oregon less, according to a study released by the Government Accountability Office successful the autumn of 2023.
The survey recovered that the authorities spends an estimated $2 cardinal per twelvemonth maintaining the bureau abstraction and an further $5 cardinal per twelvemonth to lease it.
However, arsenic Trump pushes to unit workers backmost into the office, Comer, the president of the House Oversight Committee, told NewsNation that galore authorities worker contracts see clauses that let for distant enactment connected a hybrid oregon full-time basis.
Trump said earlier this period that helium plans to bash distant with a waiver that helium said President Joe Biden provided national employees to enactment from home. He said that if needed, his medication would combat the waiver successful tribunal to unit workers backmost to the office.
"If radical don't privation to travel backmost to work, travel backmost into the office, they're going to beryllium dismissed," Trump said.
Comer told NewsNation that enforcing specified a menace won't travel without a ineligible situation from the unions representing national employees.
“This volition astir apt caput to court. But successful the tribunal of nationalist opinion, I deliberation the radical that enactment hard each time and person to spell to enactment and wage taxes, I don't deliberation they're precise blessed with the information that specified a precocious percent of the national workforce is moving from home,” Comer told NewsNation. “And they're not held accountable similar the employees who enactment for the national government, who person to spell to the bureau each day.”
Although the authorities is spending billions each twelvemonth connected carnal bureau space, experts support that the solution DOGE is seeking doesn't travel by filling government-leased buildings with national employees. Comey told NewsNation that successful summation to closing down excessive national offices, much attraction needs to beryllium paid to the workforce itself.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who person been tasked with heading up DOGE, person suggested that they would similar to destruct 25% of the national workforce. However, Comer, who believes employees are much responsive and businesslike successful the bureau than they are from home, says that alternatively than eliminating jobs, the precedence should beryllium determining what authorities employees really do.
The New York Times reported that of the 2.3 cardinal civilian workers moving for the authorities successful May, 1.1 cardinal were eligible for telework, and astir 228,000 were eligible for wholly distant work.
“Some of them haven't been seen since anterior to COVID,” Comer said. “We've got to bring them back, and I would similar for each worker to person to explicate to immoderate competent idiosyncratic precisely what their occupation entails and what their time looks similar moving from home.”
As DOGE prepares to get to work, Comer said that national officials request to find a equilibrium erstwhile it comes to what the enactment situation for galore of these authorities employees looks like.
“The bottommost enactment is, we person excessively galore national employees, the taxpayers cannot proceed to wage them bully national benefits: the semipermanent pensions, the semipermanent wellness insurance, successful summation to the conscionable the mundane payroll,” Comer told NewsNation. “The taxpayers cannot enactment this load anymore, and we're going to person to get much efficient.”
