They are remote professionals.
A meager 6% of the federal workforce “reports in-person on a full-time basis,” while nearly a third of federal workers work remotely on a full-time basis, a sharp shift from the pre-pandemic era in the United States. Only 3% work remotely daily, according to a report from the office of Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).
Ernst, who has long campaigned against the rise of federal remote work, plans to reveal the results of her office's year-and-a-half investigation to Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-chairs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy during their visit. To the Capitol Thursday.
“The nation's capital is a ghost town, with the average occupancy rate of government buildings being 12 people[%]”,” Ernst wrote in the scathing report. “If federal employees are not found at their desks, where exactly are they?”
The Iowa Republican in particular criticized President Biden's tendency to abandon the White House for his home in Delaware or to spend vacations with his wealthy donors.
“President Biden is setting an example. He has been out of office 532 days over the past three and a half years, or about 40 days[%] She scolded him at a time when he was expected to be in the Oval Office.
Her office teamed up with Open the Books, a nonprofit group that advocates for government transparency for taxpayers and alleges that the Biden administration has withheld “the work locations of more than 281,000 high-level federal employees.”
Rental and maintenance costs for federal office buildings, plus the cost of keeping them running, amount to about $15.7 billion annually, according to its report.
Meanwhile, the government has about 7,697 vacant buildings and 2,265 somewhat empty buildings, at a cost of about $15 million to lease and maintain the underutilized space, according to its report.
A blow to government services
The Hawkeye State Senator concluded that “taxpayers are being ripped off” and claimed that her constituents are upset by the lack of response from various government entities such as the Social Security Administration, Food and Drug Administration, and more.
The report reviewed a collection of anecdotes describing the inefficiency of the federal government.
She cited the example of an FDA whistleblower report that went unread for months warning about the spread of bacteria in infant formula, which eventually culminated in a national shortage in 2022.
Another example cited in the report was the director of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Atlanta, who took a photo of himself “working” in the shower, sparking outrage at the time.
“If you think this isn't a big deal, what's the big deal? Is it a big deal when a veteran dies?” one of his colleagues later became angry, according to the report.
One federal employee complained that he was “one of the few who reported to the Washington, D.C., office, and contractors had commented to him about the whereabouts of agency employees,” according to the report.
Inappropriate pay increases
To reinforce her point about “taxpayers being ripped off,” Ernst cited findings that some federal employees benefit from higher pay rates than in areas where they don't actually work.
“My audits have found as many as 23[%] To 68[%] Its report found that employees working remotely at some agencies were raising their salaries by receiving incorrect local salaries. “Some employees live more than 2,000 miles away from their offices, and one ‘temporary’ remote worker has been earning higher wages locally for nearly a decade.”
The US Office of Personnel Management found that more than 25% of federal teleworkers live more than 50 miles away from work every day.
“Government salaries are determined, in part, by an employee's official worksite locations. There are 58 local pay areas with base pay for federal employees adjusted to take into account the cost of living in each,” the report noted.
Union resistance
Ernst criticized federal employee unions for obstructing efforts to force workers to report on-site for their jobs.
Last year, the Biden administration required agencies to “substantially increase meaningful in-person work.”
In federal offices,” but the report said some union leaders ignored that.
“The administration’s new guidance on agency work environments does not go beyond the collective bargaining agreements in place at the agencies where we represent front-line employees,” Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in response at the time.
“This means that for the vast majority of our members, their access to remote work – which varies between agencies and job types – will remain unchanged.”
Solutions
To remedy the situation, Ernst proposed spreading the federal workforce across the country, enacting a “use it or lose it” approach to federal property, tying telework permissions to performance, and monitoring their locations based on virtual private networks (VPNs). Among other steps.
Last month, Ernst was announced as chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, which will team up with the NGO bearing its name led by Musk and Ramaswamy to take on government bloating and inefficiency.
On Thursday, the Senate DOGE Caucus will hold its first meeting to coincide with Musk and Ramaswamy's visit to the Capitol.
