What a great job. You get paid for five years, never have to show up at the office. No way to get reviews. No one is sure if you are working, playing golf or at a movie. Does not matter, you still get paid. Now, they are being told they have to actually work and go back to the office. Does this mean they will have to leave their real job—where they really work?
“Newsom’s executive order requires “all agencies and departments within his Administration to update their hybrid telework policies to a default of at least four days per week by July 1, 2025. The order establishes a four-day-per-week in-office expectation, with further telework flexibilities granted on a case-by-case basis in light of individual circumstances, consistent with the executive order and existing family-friendly employment policies and legal obligations.”
Tick-tock. July 1 is right around the corner.
But the whining and wailing from many state employees hasn’t let up since Newsom’s announcement.
Labor unions weighed in almost immediately: They filed “unfair practice” charges with the California Public Employment Relations Board over the new mandate.”
In this case, the unions are right. It is not fair to make workers do their job and get paid—by having to go to an office. My guess is that the unions will call a strike—and since these folks do nto work, no one will notice. Maybe if we had a real Governor, not a Hollywood Slicky pretending to be Governor he will accept the fact these folks do not work and accept their resignations when they do not show up in the office. How do you think this should be handled?
CA Public Employees and Unions Whining about Returning to the Office 5 Years Later
Tick-tock. July 1 is right around the corner
By Katy Grimes, California Globe, 4/27/25 https://californiaglobe.com/fr/ca-public-employees-and-unions-whining-about-returning-to-the-office-5-years-later/
Five years after his original Covid lockdown order, sending nearly the entire state workforce of “non-essential” workers packing in 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a “get back to the office” order Monday… but not until July 1, 2025, and only 4 days a week, the Globe reported in early March.
Newsom’s original order also locked down private sector businesses, K-12 schools, and colleges and universities, most of which were already back at work and school by the time he lifted his original lockdown order February 28, 2023 – three years later.
As we opined, “It’s March 3, 2025 and California state workers are still working from home in flannel jammies and slippers… some of who are very clearly still ‘non-essential.’”
Newsom’s executive order requires “all agencies and departments within his Administration to update their hybrid telework policies to a default of at least four days per week by July 1, 2025. The order establishes a four-day-per-week in-office expectation, with further telework flexibilities granted on a case-by-case basis in light of individual circumstances, consistent with the executive order and existing family-friendly employment policies and legal obligations.”
Tick-tock. July 1 is right around the corner.
But the whining and wailing from many state employees hasn’t let up since Newsom’s announcement.
Labor unions weighed in almost immediately: They filed “unfair practice” charges with the California Public Employment Relations Board over the new mandate.
Ted Toppin, the executive director of the Professional Engineers in California Government, described the recent change as “inexplicable and unnecessary.” The union primarily represents Department of Transportation employees. “It really is trying to end a win-win situation,” Toppin said, the Bee reported.
Labor union protests have been seen in downtown Sacramento.
That’s rich. It wasn’t so long ago when then-Senator John Moorlach exposed that Caltrans was overstaffed by 3,500 engineers, costing more than $500 million a year, and he found abuses at Caltrans that included one employee playing golf for 55 days, as his supervisors approved his time sheets.
In June 2017, Moorlach reported that “the Professional Engineers in California Government union has been salivating to fill vacancies at Caltrans and add 400 to 500 positions in the next fiscal year.”
“In response to the LAO’s report, I wrote Senate Bill X1-9 to bring Caltrans into parity with transportation agencies in most other states, eventually requiring it to contract out 50 percent of architectural and engineering services. Not only did the engineers’ union kill that bill, but it wants more. But a 2016 study for the American Council of Engineering Companies found that contracting out highway construction brings significant savings to taxpayers. The cost for one year of employing a public design team member was $349,734, compared to just $262,866 for one in a private firm. Potential savings: $86,868 per employee. So if 500 new positions are filled, hiring private contractors would save $43.4 million a year. And combining the study with the 3,500 in ‘overstaffing’ found by the LAO and that’s $1.22 billion wasted.”
Gov. Newsom should start with Caltrans.
Now lawmakers are expressing “skepticism:”
“Assemblymembers expressed skepticism with the governor’s order and its cost to California and state employees during a Tuesday Budget Subcommittee hearing focused on state administration,” the Sacramento Bee reported this week. “Those concerns were echoed by dozens of state employees who attended the hearing to testify about how Gov. Gavin Newsom’s March executive order would negatively affect them.”
The world is upside down. And California is suffering from a real lack of leadership.
In the private sector, throughout the Covid lockdowns, business owners and their employees clamored to get back to work. Because in the private sector, employees don’t get paid unless they show up for work. And because they are being paid for a job by a private sector employer, they and their employer know they are “essential,” unlike far too many state employees.
President Donald Trump put an end to remote work by federal employees January 21, 2025, his first day in office. Trump’s executive order told directors of all federal departments and agencies to enforce a fully-in-person 5-day-workweek.
While Gov. Newsom did issue his executive order March 3, he gave agencies, workers and their labor unions 4 months, far too much time to get back to the office.
According to Newsom, he “has led an ambitious effort to modernize California’s state workforce, streamline hiring, and improve government efficiency to better serve the public. His administration has cut outdated hiring barriers and launched faster recruitment efforts, modernized digital government services, reduced bureaucratic inefficiencies, implemented reforms that have cut wait times, and reformed procurement and IT systems.”
Except during his Covid lockdowns, Newsom greatly expanded the size of state government to keep the state’s unemployment numbers from looking so bad.
So the governor will cut vacant positions that haven’t been filled, but have been budgeted for. What a scheme.
During last year’s budget talks and negotiations, the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that salaries and benefits for California’s approximately 250,000 state employees cost the state $40 billion a year ($160,000 average salary in California state government).
As KXTV reported, hundreds of state workers with SEIU Local 1000 protested Newsom’s return to work order.
Gavin Newsom created this mess. He sent state employees home when he locked the state down March 2020 ostensibly over a flu. And he let state employees work from home for 5 years. Many have done well, and are accountable employees, But many more are not, and need supervision and accountability.
President Trump’s back-to-the-office order and hiring freeze has elicited a lot of kvetching in D.C., but is designed to suss out the deadwood in the federal government – something Governor Newsom should also be doing, figuratively and literally.
Newsom ought to start with the loudest whiners – and Caltrans.
