CNN
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Millions of federal workers were ordered to return to offices across the country in recent weeks, marking an end to Covid-era rules allowing more flexibility to work from home.
Many have come back to workplaces that weren’t ready for them.
In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week.
Department of Education employees at an office in Dallas returned to ethernet cords in piles around the floor, random wires sticking out of walls, and motion-sensor lights that weren’t working correctly, leading to dark workspaces. One employee tripped over a pile of cords on her first day back, resulting in a large gash on her foot. She’s submitted a workers’ compensation complaint.
And a Department of Defense employee who returned to in-office work and handles sensitive information was stuck in a conference room with people on different teams, forcing them to leave the room to make calls. The employee was eventually moved to an office — but one without Wi-Fi, so they had to use their phone’s spotty hot spot.
“The only thing a return to the office has given me is an hour of traffic while driving and a loss in efficiency,” said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of job reprisals.
The problems, confusion and slipups that federal employees told CNN they’ve encountered returning to the office have only added to the chaos inside the workforce six weeks into a Trump administration determined to slash the size and scope of the federal government.
Some federal workers being told to return to the office have no space to return to. At least two office buildings used by the Interior Department in the Western US were told last week their leases had been canceled, according to a source familiar with the matter — while a third office housing hundreds of people was notified its lease will be up in June.
One source said the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings, did not appear to coordinate the lease terminations with Interior officials, leaving employees unclear of what to do. An Interior spokesperson said the department was “working with GSA to ensure facilities or alternative options will be available” for employees.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded all federal workers return to the office as his administration has undertaken sweeping actions seeking to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce, including mass firings of probationary workers and employees in government diversity departments.
Trump’s in-office mandate has been coupled with a push to slash government real estate, setting up a dilemma of too little space for too many people. Even before Trump took office in January, the federal government was downsizing office space due in part to the shift toward telework during the pandemic.
Nearly half of the more than 2.3 million civilian federal workers were eligible for telework, and 10% were in remote positions with no expectation of in-person work, according to a 2024 Office of Management and Budget report. Many workers stopped working full time in their offices during the Covid-19 pandemic, but others had long-held arrangements for working from home — and now could face the prospect of choosing between fundamentally changing their job or leaving it altogether.
More than 80% of federal workers reside outside the Washington, DC, metro area, meaning the return-to-office mandate will cause ripple effects across the country.
Some government employees are now making the post-pandemic transition that millions of private-sector workers already have — upending their lives and schedules in the process. For many federal employees, however, those worries have been subsumed by their larger fear of losing jobs entirely in Trump’s multipronged effort to shrink the federal workforce.
Federal workers and union officials told CNN they see this as part of an attempt by the Trump administration to make life uncomfortable for federal workers in hopes that some will quit.
Trump and Elon Musk, de facto chief of the Department of Government Efficiency, have both threatened to fire workers who do not come back to the office, even those represented by unions who have signed long-term telework agreements. Many federal agencies set February 24 as the first date for some of their employees to comply with Trump’s return-to-office directive.
“If they don’t report for work, we’re firing them. In other words, you have to go to office,” Trump said at a conservative political conference last month, while claiming that his golf game would improve dramatically if he were to work remotely.
Federal employee unions have argued Trump’s demand to break long-term telework agreements is unlawful, though the return-to-office mandate isn’t central to the major legal challenges unions have brought against the president. But there have been pockets of pushback, such as the employee union at the Environmental Protection Agency, which is demanding to bargain around the return-to-office mandate. Additionally, some individual EPA employees represented by the union are filing grievances around returning to the office.
One of their biggest concerns, an EPA union official told CNN, is “local fire and safety regulations — how many people can you jam into a room?”
DOGE has kept a running list on its website touting more than 200 building leases the Musk-run agency says it’s canceled. The canceled leases, which include Social Security Administration and US attorneys’ offices, have raised questions locally about where those employees are supposed to go.
Trump also signed an executive order last week instructing each government agency to identify all leases that can be terminated and submit a plan to dispose of “government-owned real property which has been deemed by the agency as no longer needed.”
The drive to shrink the federal government’s real estate portfolio predates the Trump administration. The Office of Management and Budget issued a “Reduce the Footprint” directive in 2015 that requires agencies to make more efficient use of federal property and dispose of surplus assets.
Last year’s OMB report included a list of agencies’ efforts to downsize their holdings. For instance, the Department of Veterans Affairs reduced office space in its headquarters locations in the Washington, DC, metro area by 16% between 2020 and 2022, saving $15 million annually.
The GSA cut its own footprint by more than 2 million square feet over 10 years, avoiding $300 million in costs. And the Department of Energy moved out of 193,000 square feet of leased space in 2023, saving $9 million annually.
Those downsizings have had an impact. One federal employee still waiting for their date to return to the office told CNN they suspect it’s been delayed because of a lack of room. Their agency, which the employee asked not to name because of concerns for their job, has been shedding office space for several years, so teleworking staffers have had to reserve desks in the remaining locations for the days they come in.
The space constraint, coupled with the Trump administration’s reduction-in-force order, has the worker fearing their agency will suffer heavy layoffs. “The only way RTO (return-to-office) works in these types of situations is if you now reduce the number of people,” the employee said.
Multiple federal agencies brought the bulk of their employees back last week, a return that was met in some cases with a lack of desks, basic supplies and working equipment.
“There was very little prep and planning and it was messy with equipment,” an HHS staffer told CNN. The employee, who asked for their specific location not to be named, said there were reports of Wi-Fi and electricity not working.
Asked about the issue, Andrew Nixon, HHS’ communications director, said the agency is complying with Trump’s return to the office executive order. “We look forward to seeing and collaborating with our colleagues in person to Make America Healthy Again,” he continued.
The Department of Education sent an email last week to staff in regional offices acknowledging the shortcomings in some facilities on Day 1 of their return.
“At the present time we are unable to deploy full peripheral setups in the regional/remote offices,” the department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer told employees in an email, which was obtained by CNN.
Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252 in Dallas and a Department of Education employee, said her office was “chaos” when employees returned. She filed the workers’ comp complaint after injuring her foot tripping over a pile of cords on the floor.
“The facilities were not actually ready for us to return,” Smith said.
“No one is on-site to try to fix the issues,” she added, saying the mess leads her to believe “they would be hoping that we would quit, I guess — that they didn’t expect us to come.”
Another Department of Education employee in Washington, DC, said the first week back lacked basic office needs: computers, pens and headsets — as well as private space and conference rooms necessary for confidential job requirements.
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, a telework policy has been in place for more than 20 years, officials said. Many employees had been teleworking three to four days a week and are now adapting to the rigidity of returning to the office.
“Morale is pretty low,” a staffer in the agency said. “If you have a dentist appointment at 3 p.m. near where you live, and it ends at 4:15 p.m., you cannot work that last hour from home. You have to go back to the office or take sick leave.”
The return-to-office mandate comes as budget cuts at EPA led to reduced cleaning and facility services at key offices, even before the Trump administration took over.
In the three major EPA offices around the country that make up the agency’s headquarters — Washington, Cincinnati and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina — health units were closed and in-office mail delivery was cut back, according to a memo obtained by CNN. In Cincinnati, drinking fountain cleaning schedules were reduced to once per week, carpets and hallways were swept once a month, and bathroom cleanings were pared back to once a day.
“With these people coming back to the offices, they’re going to have fewer facility services,” the EPA union official said.
The 2024 OMB report found those eligible for telework spend about 60% of their working hours in the office, on average, though that figure varies widely by agency. About 10% of staffers have remote jobs, where they are not expected to report to an office at all, according to the report, which noted the Biden administration also directed agencies to increase the amount of time federal workers spent at the office.
The Biden administration’s goal was for teleworkers to spend at least 50% of the time in the office. Now Trump turned that into a full-time mandate.
But not all federal workers are returning at the same pace, as Trump’s executive order, issued hours after he took office in January, directed agencies to terminate remote work arrangements “as soon as practicable.”
Several agencies, including the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, have said political appointees, senior executives and other senior staffers could no longer work remotely or telework as of February 24, and neither could supervisors who live within 50 miles of an agency facility.
Others have more time. For instance, at the VA, lower-level non-union employees who live within 50 miles of a facility will have their remote and telework arrangements terminated by April 28, except for ad hoc or situational circumstances, the agency said. But these arrangements for supervisors and other non-union employees who reside farther away were not ended — those staffers will receive additional guidance.
As for union workers at the VA, their return-to-office date will be announced at a later time, the agency said.
At the Department of Education, more than 70% of its workforce started reporting to the Washington and regional offices full time last week, the agency said in a news release. The rest are expected back by June 1 after building renovations and relocation arrangements are complete.
However, many union members at the Department of Housing and Urban Development who were previously able to telework on certain days had to return to the office full time in late February, said Antonio Gaines, president of the AFGE Council 222, which represents 5,300 employees at the agency. Workers at some regional and field offices are exempt for now because of lack of space and safety concerns, including building renovations and inadequate HVAC systems.
The mandate violates the union’s collective bargaining agreement, he argued.
“They made a unilateral decision to bypass the negotiating process,” Gaines said of the agency, adding that the union plans to file a complaint on this matter as part of a bigger grievance package.
The department did not return a request for comment.
