State legislators consider taking a play out of President Trump’s book and eliminating remote work policies for state employees.
A local news report from ABC27 has revealed that, in the post-pandemic era, some Pennsylvania legislators are eager to see a new requirement for state employees to return to office full time.
“Amazon, Google, some of the biggest companies in this country, they just basically told their people, ‘Okay, the past is over,’” Sen. Chris Gebhard (R) told the outlet. “‘We’re going back to the way we were. This is what our corporate policy is. You either do it or you get fired.’ And that’s what we need to do.”
Similarly, Sen. Dave Argall (R) shared a story of visiting a cabinet secretary and believing him to be the only person actually working from the office that day.
“I said, ‘You know what? What the hell is going on?’ “He said, ‘Oh, it’s Monday,’” Argall recalled. “It’s – it’s a big problem. It really is.”
The subject of requiring Commonwealth employees to return to office full time has been raised on numerous occasions as the state government has continued to bounce back from Covid-19 era protocols.
In February of 2023, Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a new policy requiring state workers to return to office at least three days per week; the order was estimated to impact 2,300 staff members.
“We are eager to set the tone at the top in supporting practices that support workers and the communities in which they live and work,” stated Neil Weaver, Gov. Shapiro’s Secretary of Administration, after the policy change.
Amid the Trump administration’s changes to work-from-home policies for federal employees, however, discourse continues about whether workers paid through taxpayer dollars should be provided any leniency on in-office work at all.
The executive order eliminating remote work permissions for federal workers was among the very first signed by the new President after his inauguration. President Trump has been clear on his opinions of work-from-home privileges, saying, “I happen to be a believer that you have to go to work. I don’t think you can work from home.”
The President’s executive order on the issue, simply titled “Return to In-Person Work,” requires the heads of all government agencies to ““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 popularity of return-to-office mandates has also continued to rise in recent years throughout the corporate world, with companies like Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and AT&T all requiring employees to work in-person five days per week.
Among workers, however, policies terminating remote work are far less popular. According to one study from Pew Research Center, roughly half of workers would prefer to quit their job than return to the office full-time.
