Ernst’s report documenting telework ‘abuse’ obscures more than it reveals

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, last week unveiled the results of her office’s investigation into telework at federal agencies, but despite her bluster, the report failed to uncover any systemic abuse of the flexibility or that it made agencies less productive.

Ernst chairs the fledgling Senate DOGE Caucus, named for President-elect Trump’s planned government efficiency advisory commission, and delivered her report to co-chairmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk and Ramaswamy have mused in interviews and on social media about ending telework for federal workers and issuing reductions in force as strategies to shrink the size of the federal government.

“For years, I have been tracking down bureaucrats relaxing in bubble baths, playing golf, getting arrested, and doing just about everything besides their jobs,” Ernst said in a statement. “It would almost be funny if it wasn’t happening on the taxpayers’ dime and at the expense of veterans, seniors, small business owners and Americans in need of competent service from government agencies.”

In a press release announcing the delivery of her report, Ernst claimed that “90% of federal employees telework,” that only 6% of federal employees work entirely in-person, and that “nearly 33%” of federal workers are entirely remote workers. None of these figures are accurate when compared to the most recent report on federal telework.

As of May 2024, 54% of federal employees spent all of their work hours at traditional work sites because of the nature of their job precludes telework. Though 46% of the federal workforce is eligible for telework, only about 41.4% actually use the workplace flexibility to telework at least situationally. The data comes from the Office of Management and Budget in a nearly 3,000-page report last August, issued in response to language in fiscal 2024 appropriations legislation demanding an up-to-date snapshot of federal telework.

According to OMB, the 1.1 million telework-eligible workers who used telework still spent 61.2% of their work hours in person. And just 10% of the civilian federal workforce, or 228,000 employees, are approved for remote work, in which an employee may work entirely from their home or an agency-approved alternative work site, well below the 1/3 figure Ernst cited.

Ernst did not respond to a request for comment regarding these discrepancies.

Ernst’s 60-page report offers a litany of anecdotes about federal workers allegedly misbehaving while on telework, but in multiple instances appears to misrepresent the findings of an agency inspector general. For example, the report claims that the Architect of the Capitol’s inspector general found that “80% of the teleworkers are receiving incorrect locality pay.”

But according to the IG’s report, that figure referred not to teleworkers but rather to the ratio of remote workers receiving incorrect locality pay and represents 20 employees out of a workforce of more than 2,000. The errors amounted to $115,500 in wasted taxpayer dollars for an agency whose fiscal 2024 budget was $947 million.

In response to Ernst’s report, as well as Republicans’ criticism of the Social Security Administration and one of its unions’ recent deal to extend the agency’s telework policy until 2029, the American Federation of Government Employees issued a press release fact-checking their claims.

"The truth is that about 80% of all hours worked by federal employees occur at their regular duty station, and more than half of the federal workforce have never and will never engage in telework, including a majority of AFGE’s members," said AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a statement Monday. "Our corrections officers in federal prisons, our border patrol agents, our TSA security screeners, civilians at Department of Defense depots and arsenals who repair and maintain weapons for our troops, and the health care workers in VA hospitals and clinics all hold jobs that are not appropriate for telework, and they all continued to report to their regular duty stations even at the most dangerous periods of the pandemic. The pandemic-era teleworkers allowed continuity of operations at their agencies, and the thanks they’re now getting is lies and disparagement about their commitment to their work.”