Trump will fight Biden remote work deal; union vows to fight back

President-elect Trump said on Monday that he plans to push back on President Biden’s move to strike a deal that would allow tens of thousands of federal workers to remain in a hybrid work arrangement with telecommuting through 2029.

“We’re talking about friendly control, friendly transition, as they like to say, this is a friendly transition, and it is,” Trump said at a press conference. “But two events happened, which, in my opinion, are very terrible.”

“One is that if people don’t go back to work, they’re going to be fired, and somebody in the Biden administration gave that up for five years. So, for five years, people. you don’t have to go back to the office,” said Trump. “For five years, 49,000 people have been involved. They just signed on. It’s like a gift to the union, so we’re going to stop it.”

Trump’s comments come after an agreement was reached earlier this month between the largest federal labor union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and Social Security Administration (SSA) which “sets current levels of teleworking in our National Agreement until 25 October 2029”.

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President-elect Trump said his incoming administration would try to block the five-year telework contract between SSA and AFGE. (via Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

The deal that came first reports BloombergCovering roughly 42,000 Social Security workers nationwide, the agreement calls for workers to work two to five days a week, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

AFGE National President Everett Kelly responded to Trump’s comments about the telecommuting deal, saying the union supports telecommuting “where it delivers to both taxpayers and the workers who serve them. Remote work and telecommuting are tools that have helped the federal government increase productivity and efficiency, maintain business continuity, and enhance disaster preparedness.”

“The rumors about widespread federal telecommuting and telecommuting are simply not true. More than half of federal employees cannot telecommute at all due to the nature of their jobs, only 10% of federal employees telecommute, and those with a hybrid arrangement spend more than 60. The percentage of working hours in the office,” Kelly said.

“Collective agreements signed by the federal government are binding and subject to the law. We are confident that the incoming administration will fulfill their obligations to respect the law. union contracts. If they fail to do so, we will be ready to exercise our rights,” Kelly added.

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President-elect Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, and they have been critical of federal telecommuting policies. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Trump ordered Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will focus on finding ways to reduce government spending and improve the effectiveness of federal initiatives.

Musk and Ramaswamy have indicated they want to end telecommuting and view requiring federal workers to return to the office as a way to encourage voluntary layoffs.

“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week will lead to a wave of voluntary layoffs that we welcome. If federal employees don’t want to report, American taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for their COVID-19 leave. staying at home,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a published paper The Wall Street Journal last month.

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Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate DOGE Caucus, said after the deal between AFGE and SSA was declared “unacceptable” that he would work with Musk, Ramaswamy and DOGE to “fix this problem as soon as possible” and get the bureaucrats back to work.”

FOX Business’ Breck Dumas and Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.