Author: Senator Joni Ernst
Published in the Washington Examiner
Public servants going to work shouldn't make headlines. But recently it has happened.
Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Labor gathered together. At work protested their “right to work remotely” earlier this year. And if that wasn't rich enough, the event took place outside the federal building named after John F. Kennedy, a president who inspired the nation with his call to public service. Ta. Think about what you can do for your country. ”
In President Joe Biden's backward world, President Kennedy's call has been reversed.
Even the best-performing federal agencies are not using 50% of their office space, according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
I recently asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Small Business Secretary Isabella Guzman about their corporate headquarters' occupancy rates (11% and 9%, respectively, according to GAO) and what they plan to do about it. Their answer was shocking.
Mr. Vilsack said that not only was GAO wrong, but so was his own staff in a letter to me that called USDA headquarters a “ghost town.” Mr. Guzmán took a similar approach, accusing GAO of leaving the Small Business Administration's headquarters essentially empty.
Meanwhile, the Commission on Public Building Reform, an independent agency created by Congress to address the government's real estate glut, found that GAO did. These buildings are abandoned.
According to the Public Building Reform Commission, on any given day in 2023, only 456 employees reported to work at the Department of Agriculture's headquarters in Vilsack, which has 7,500 employees.
And it's not just the USDA. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, the home of the bubble bath bureaucracy, only 172 people bothered to show up at the agency's headquarters every day in 2023.
All of this despite a directive from the Office of Management and Budget to bring employees back to the office in April 2023.
So why does the building still remain empty? Union.
Federal employee unions are fighting tooth and nail against returning to work. The federal Labor Relations Board, which resolves disputes between government agencies and labor unions, has been inundated with telework-related complaints, often forcing major agencies like the DOL and the Federal Aviation Administration to postpone return-to-work plans. . Let's just hope FAA inspectors, whose job it is to make sure airplane doors don't blow out during flight, aren't inspecting planes remotely.
And that's not all federal government Union. The union representing D.C. city government employees, which itself receives large federal grants, told reporters that “for several important reasons, including safety concerns, we have decided to reduce the number of work-from-home days per week.” “We are against reducing the number of days from two days to one.” [and] Environmental impact. ”
Try telling Iowa farmers and warehouse workers that one more day in the office “raises safety concerns.”
If unions continue to work against the public interest, get serious about taxpayer-funded union time that allows federal employees to work with taxpayer money for unions rather than government agencies. The time has come to work on it. That's why I passed legislation requiring all government agencies to report occupancy rates and the number of employees in their offices, and to submit to Congress a copy of all agreements they have with federal employee unions related to telework. The reason is.Additionally, I am working to pass The taxpayer-funded Union Time Transparency Act would expose exactly how much of the public's tax dollars are being used to subsidize union fights against return to work.
Perhaps a new version of Kennedy's inspirational words should read: “Do public servants serve the people or themselves?” I know the answer – so do American taxpayers.
Published in the Washington Examiner
###
