2020 called, it wants Covid-era work-from-home rules back.
It is 2026. The pandemic emergency is over. Offices are open. Schools are open. Restaurants are open. Hospitals never closed. Police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers, grocery clerks, construction workers, waiters, flight attendants, janitors, retail workers, and millions of private-sector employees have long since returned to regular in-person schedules.
Even government employees in Washington D.C. were forced to return to the office…last year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order requiring most state workers to return to the office four days a week beginning July 1 has triggered the predictable backlash from public-sector unions. SEIU Local 1000, which represents many state employees, has warned of traffic problems, morale problems, recruitment problems, retirement problems, and even a possible “mass exodus.”
A mass exodus from where, exactly? Their living rooms?
That may sound harsh, but it is the obvious question most taxpayers will ask. In 49 out of 50 states, plus Washington D.C., workers are back in the office. California state workers are not being sent to a coal mine. They are not being asked to work seven days a week. They are being asked to show up at the office four days a week for government jobs funded by people who already commute, pay taxes, and often receive less generous benefits than the public employees now complaining about having to appear in person.
The union argument is especially tone-deaf because California is not exactly a model of efficient, responsive, low-cost government. The state has high taxes, high housing costs, a strained budget, struggling cities, a battered business climate, and a public that often feels government services are slow, distant, and unaccountable. In that environment, government workers threatening to quit because they are expected to come into the office sounds less like a crisis and more like insanity.
If someone wants a job built around maximum flexibility, that is perfectly understandable. Many people want that. But public employment does not exist to provide the most comfortable possible arrangement for the employee. It exists to serve the public. If a state worker decides four days in the office is too much, that worker is free to seek more flexible employment elsewhere. That is not oppression. That is adulthood.
The most serious-sounding defense of telework is the claim that it saves taxpayers money. But that argument collapses quickly unless the savings are real, current, and measurable. Empty desks do not save money by themselves. If the state still owns the buildings, maintains them, repairs them, secures them, heats them, cools them, staffs them, and pays all the related costs, then taxpayers are not saving money. They are funding offices government workers no longer want to enter.
There may be hypothetical savings if the state sells property, cancels leases, consolidates departments, reduces office footprints, and cuts actual budget lines. But “we might save money someday if the government reorganizes its real estate portfolio” is not a serious justification for refusing to return to work now. It is a theoretical talking point dressed up as fiscal responsibility.
The same goes for productivity claims. If state workers are more efficient at home, prove it. Show faster processing times. Show fewer backlogs. Show better customer service. Show that phones are answered, applications are processed, permits move faster, and Californians receive better service. Public employees cannot simply declare, “We have been efficient,” and expect taxpayers to accept that as proof.
And in fact, if problems weren’t caused by so many employees still “working from home,” no one would be complaining about it.
The burden should not be on taxpayers to justify wanting government workers back in government offices. The burden should be on the workers, unions, and agencies to prove remote work produces better public service at a lower public cost. Without that proof, telework is not a taxpayer benefit. It is a perk.
Newsom is right to push back. In-person work is not some ancient relic. It is how relationships are built, younger workers learn, managers observe problems, and institutions maintain basic accountability. Good employees are already back at the office. The best never left. Not every job requires five days a week in the office, but a four-day standard is hardly extreme. It is more generous than many private-sector workers receive.
The larger political problem for Democrats is that public-sector unions often seem to forget who pays the bills. Taxpayers are not an abstraction. They are the people sitting in traffic, paying for gas, arranging child care, showing up to job sites, and funding the salaries of state employees who now claim the commute is unbearable.
California’s government workers have a choice. They can return to the office and serve the public from the workplaces taxpayers provide. Or they can find jobs with the flexibility they prefer.
What they should not be allowed to do is turn a pandemic-era emergency arrangement into a permanent entitlement, then threaten the public with a “mass exodus” when asked to return to normal life.
It is 2026. The office is open. It is time to go back.
(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)