President Trump rankled federal workers by ordering them to stop teleworking and get back to the office.

Around Washington this week, government employees balked at Mr. Trump trying to force them back to the daily grind of sitting in traffic and the other workday rituals that go with showing up in person at federal office buildings.

“Nobody is liking that,” said Kyra Toland, a budget analyst with the Department of Labor who has worked in the federal government for over three decades.

Ms. Toland said federal employees — particularly those in data-driven jobs like hers — have a proven track record of getting things done remotely.

“We showed that we could do it,” she said.

Mr. Trump trained his focus on the federal workforce shortly after taking the oath of office on Monday. 

He signed executive orders that reclassified hundreds of thousands of federal workers as at-will employees, initiated a hiring freeze and ended equity and inclusion programs at federal agencies.

He also signed a “Return to In-Person Work” order that said that all government and departments in the executive branch “shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”

The announcement was a long time in the making.

Mr. Trump, throughout the 2024 campaign, vowed to slice the size and scope of the federal government and ax the “rogue bureaucrats” who he claimed stood in his way during his first four years in office.

The American Federal of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union representing 800,000 government, criticized the move.

“To justify this backward action, lawmakers and members of President Trump’s transition team have spent months exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “The truth is that less than half of all federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers who are eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations.”

AFGE also highlighted how the order stopped short of “tearing up collective bargaining agreements.”

Indeed, some federal employees say they feel protected because telework is baked into their current contracts.

“There are already collective bargaining agreements, so I guess it would not take effect until those expire,” another labor department employee, who declined to give his name, said. “Right now, today, nobody’s worried.” 

Asked what would happen if Mr. Trump could circumvent the current agreements and implement his plan, the man said he would expect that more retirement-eligible employees would head for the exits but he would fall in line.

“It would be an inconvenience,” he said, mentioning traffic. “I wouldn’t look for another job. I would come to work.”

Mr. Trump telegraphed the move last month when he criticized a last-minute deal bargaining the Biden administration struck with the Social Security Administration that locked in telework agreements for 42,000 employees until 2029.

Republicans on Capitol Hill accused President Biden of trying to Trump-proof the federal bureaucracy and putting the interests of federal employee unions over those of the American people by failing to make the case that these policies benefit the public or improve agency operations.

Mr. Trump had a stern warning for stay-at-home federal workers: “If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed.”

The newly minted Department of Government Efficiency and budget hawks on Capitol Hill have also focused on the large amount of taxpayer dollars spent on government buildings that have become relative ghost towns in the post-COVID era.

A recent House Oversight Committee report found that 10% of the federal workforce — roughly 228,000 employees — never go to the office, and 1.1 million employees are allowed to telework.

In addition to the 1.3 million active duty military personnel, the federal government employs over 3 million people, including 600,000 people working with the U.S. Postal Service, according to the Pew Research Center.

Roughly 450,000 of them work in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

With 486,000 employees, the Department of Veterans Affairs has the largest payroll among the Cabinet-level departments. The Department of Labor has less than 15,000 employees, while the Department of Education has just over 4,000 employees.

The federal workforce — not including the Postal Service — has grown from 1.85 million people in November 2000 to 2.4 million in March 2024, according to Pew.

That is roughly 1.5% of the total civil employment.

“While the number of federal workers has grown over time, their share of the civilian workforce has generally held steady in recent years,” Pew said.

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.