Post-election efforts to erect roadblocks to change before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes over are underway with tens of thousands of federal employees getting their work-from-home privilege extended through the end of the incoming administration.
A Biden administration official just agreed to an updated contract with a powerful union that locks in telework through 2029, complicating efforts to reform government waste by requiring federal workers to return to the office.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) reached a deal with the Social Security Administration (SSA) to protect the employees from being forced to actually show up to collect a government paycheck.
Biden is attempting to make permanent the Deep State before he leaves office by burdening the government with untenable contracts so that @realDonaldTrump and @DOGE cannot succeed. This needs to stop now.
Federal Employees Land Work From Home Deal https://t.co/dShbo3UMeW
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 3, 2024
The union which represents 42,000 SSA workers “reached an agreement with the agency last week that will protect telework until 2029 in an updated contract,” the outlet reported, citing a message to members that it reviewed.
The contract was signed by outgoing President Joe Biden’s former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley who resigned from his job last month. The agreement allows the SSA to “maintain current levels of telework,” the union’s chapter president Rich Couture wrote, according to Bloomberg.
“This deal will secure not just telework for SSA employees, but will secure staffing levels through prevention of higher attrition, which in turn will secure the ability of the Agency to serve the public,” Couture told the outlet.
News of the deal drew a strong reaction from House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) who has been a vocal critic of the remote work which is ripe for abuse by government loafers.
Don’t get too comfortable.. pic.twitter.com/9ts2yGSf4c
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) December 3, 2024
“Our government needs to show up for the people it serves,” Comer wrote, sharing an Oversight Committee post highlighting the Bloomberg report that said, “Don’t get too comfortable.”
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy who will head up the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plan to make deep layoffs across the federal bureaucracy that could save taxpayers billions of dollars and have been critical of remote work.
“If you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won’t want to do that,” Ramaswamy said during a Fox News appearance last month. “If you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great. That’s a good side effect of those policies as well.”
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” the two wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that outlined their plans for DOGE.
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