In the final hours of arguably the worst administration since Herbert Hoover, Joe Biden’s Social Security Commissioner, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a five-year contract The American Federation of Government Employees guarantees agency employees will continue to work from home or telework for up to four days per week.
“This agreement not only secures telework for SSA employees, but also safeguards staffing levels by preventing higher turnover, which in turn secures the agency’s ability to serve the public,” he said. “This is a win for employees and for the American public.”
Not everyone was quite as enthusiastic.
The news was less celebrated by Republicans in Congress and Vivek Ramaswamy, a co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s planned Government Efficiency Commission. Elon Musk and Ramaswamy have repeatedly said they would seek to limit, if not eliminate, the exploit of telework at federal agencies and have suggested the move as a tool to cut federal jobs.
“Thousands of federal employees just made a work-from-home deal [President-elect Trump] Inauguration Day,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said on X.
“These midnight maneuvers by the Biden administration are illegitimate and are under review,” Ramaswamy wrote on Twitter. “Any new proclamations issued by the executive branch may be reversed by the executive branch.”
Barring a finding of wrongdoing that could result in a court invalidating the deal, the Trump administration is stuck with this stinking deal. It was exactly the kind of chicken-shit move that wouldn’t surprise anyone who lived through O’Malley’s two terms in the Maryland statehouse.
This points to two major problems in the federal workforce. First, the idea that a union should represent federal employees is ridiculous. The whole thing is a gift. That’s a topic for another day. The second problem is that teleworking and its abuse are commonplace and there is no doubt that it defrauds the taxpayer of money and services.
A modern report from Iowa Senator Joni Ernst details how The system is being abused.
A paltry 6% of federal employees are “reporting in-person on a full-time basis,” while nearly a third of federal employees are working remotely on a full-time basis, a significant turnaround from pre-pandemic times. According to a report from Sen. Joni Ernst’s office, only 3% were reporting. Telework daily.
Ernst (R-Iowa), who has long fought against increased remote work at the federal level, plans to reveal the results of her office’s year-and-a-half investigation to Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy during their visit at the Capitol on Thursday.
While the Reporter for GovExec claims that SSA has a telecommuting rate of “1.3%,” numerically that would mean only 780 people SSA’s 60,000 employees work from home. If that were the case, then it hardly seems like something AFGE would make a massive deal about. The truth is probably much worse. Ernst’s investigation found a space utilization rate on the SSA headquarters campus of just 7%; see page 3. The union claimed that working from home was the only reason stopping a cascade of layoffs and retirements.
“It is well documented that ours is changing [telework] The level would accelerate an ongoing workforce crisis,” the union wrote. “More than a quarter of workers are eligible for retirement and 60% say they will look for another job after telecommuting ends. Eliminating telework while the agency is facing a 50-year staffing shortage jeopardizes Social Security operations across the country, harming vulnerable Americans. Arbitrarily eliminating a highly effective telework program would be an intentionally fatal strategy by the Social Security Administration.”
I’m just a fucking infantryman from Southside Virginia, but that sounds like a hell of a lot more people than like 728.
There are multiple areas of waste, fraud and abuse at work here. Most overlooked is the cost of leasing and operating massive buildings, whose occupancy averages just 12%. And then there is the blatant abuse of privilege.
Perhaps no one represents President Biden’s term better than the bubble bath bureaucrat at the VA who called from the bathtub while veterans were put on hold.#BureaucratOfTheYear pic.twitter.com/ibcSnojT6l
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) December 8, 2023
In miniature: Between lost productivity, excess office space, overstaffing and outright fraud, telecommuting costs billions of dollars each year and offers some federal employees little more than a comfortable lifestyle.
President Trump has vowed to take action.
“When Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20th and America’s modern golden age begins, he will tell the federal workers of this country who your viewers are paying to return to the office and do their jobs or find another career. ” “Miller told Fox News Jesse Watters during an interview.
He should. Americans are tired of their money being wasted, and if ending telecommuting leads to a tsunami of retirements and layoffs, then that’s a no-brainer.
READ THE REPORT
Serious telework report from streak on Scribd
