The largest federal employee union in the country opposes the GOP's efforts to eliminate telecommuting.

The AFGE, the largest labor union for federal employees in the US, is countering GOP accusations that federal workers are misusing remote work policies.

The Trump administration has prompted Republicans to challenge remote-work and work-from-home policies that have been in place since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., announced a set of bills she intends to introduce, aimed at increasing federal accountability for the use of taxpayer dollars. One of the bills proposes that federal agencies submit a report detailing the effects of remote work since the pandemic, as well as their plans for implementing remote work policies in the future.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R–Iowa, chair of the new Department of Government Efficiency caucus, has recently penned a report suggesting ways to reduce the number of government employees working remotely, including tracking their individual productivity and linking it to their ability to work from home.

The AFGE, representing about 800,000 civil servants, is criticizing these initiatives, calling them an intentional effort to belittle federal employees and justify the widespread privatization of public sector jobs.

AFGE issued a press release on Friday to correct the misinformation spread by GOP politicians regarding the misuse of telework. The union emphasized the importance of facts and urged lawmakers to base their decisions on accurate information when affecting the lives of their constituents.

The report by Ernst, presented to President-elect Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last week, revealed several "myths" about federal employee telework, including one that claims "nearly one-third" of the federal workforce is "entirely remote."

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reported in an August 2024 report to Congress that only 10% of federal civilian workers were in remote positions where there was no expectation that they worked in-person, according to AFGE.

The labor group challenged Ernst's claims from her report that "most federal workers are eligible to telework and 90% of [them] are," as well as her claim that only 6% of the federal workforce goes into the office every single day. According to the OMB report to Congress, AFGE argued that actually fewer than half – roughly 46% – of federal workers are eligible for telework, while adding that 54% of the federal workforce have jobs that require them to be in-person every single day.

In response to AFGE's challenge of her claims, Ernst stated that the true myth is that bureaucrats are actually showing up to work.

"The Iowa senator stated on Planet Chronicle Digital that federal employees are already whistleblowing and their unions are fiercely fighting against returning to the office. He invited public sector unions to support his legislation to track their productivity during work hours. This, he believes, will prove how hard they are working for the American people and settle the debate once and for all. In the coming days, he plans to share more profiles of "working" from home, and he has received numerous tips from whistleblowers."

The labor union AFGE aimed to refute various "myths" about federal workers, including assertions from Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Russell Vought. One of the claims AFGE targeted from Musk stated that when you exclude federal employees who cannot work remotely due to their daily duties, such as "security guards and maintenance personnel," the number of federal workers going into the office for at least 40 hours per week is approximately 1%.

According to a source familiar with the data used in Ernst's report, the numbers used by AFGE are cherry-picked because they rely on federal workers who could not work remotely if they wanted to, such as Border Patrol officers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents.

The Social Security Administration has agreed to allow federal workers to continue teleworking at current levels until 2029, impacting approximately 42,000 employees, according to Bloomberg News.

AFGE did not respond to Planet Chronicle Digital's request for comment by the time of publication.