Hard-working Americans are paying for federal employees to take it easy…
With 2.2 million employees, the Federal Government is the largest employer in the country. In post-COVID America, many department heads are finding it difficult to bring fully-paid workers back to the office; thousands and thousands of government office desks remain empty.
Some 200,000 workers are refusing to return to their desks, creating a crisis for White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients. Zients is currently pressuring Cabinet secretaries to break their staff’s stubborn work-from-home habits, according to an Axios report.
Over the summer, Zients wrote the following in a memo to Cabinet heads:
“We are returning to in-person work because it is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to deliver better results for the American people. As we look towards the fall, and with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, your agencies will be implementing increases in the amount of in-person work for your team. This is a priority of the President — and I am looking to each of you to aggressively execute this shift in September and October.”
Now, it’s December —and Zients is still struggling to put butts in the seats. And the benchmark is pretty low, with workers expected to spend five out of every ten days in the office.
Yes, 50% attendance is the success rate in the Biden Administration.
“Are the telework policies in federal agencies putting mission accomplishment—and the American taxpayer—first?” asked Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, at a hearing Wednesday.
“The president himself is telling federal employees to get back in the office, and they aren’t coming back.”
That’s right, they aren’t —and to the detriment to the efficiency of many departments.
“Greater in-person presence is essential to our ability to problem-solve, build trust, and foster the community needed to tackle the global challenges USAID works on every day,” USAID administrator Samantha Power said in a statement.
Similarly, VA Secretary Denis McDonough stressed the importance of on-site work.
“It is really important to make sure that we’re getting the new team trained,” McDonough said, mentioning priorities like the PACT Act, for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. “And we’re sharing that culture and there’s no better way to do that than in person.”
What will it take to get the Biden Administration back to work? What will it take to redefine the success metric as something larger than 50%?
