By Courtney Rozen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Federal employees can get permission to work from home or adjust their hours to accommodate religious fasts and prayers, the Trump administration said on Wednesday, after previously demanding that workers report to offices full time.
President Donald Trump ordered all federal employees on Inauguration Day to report to their work sites five days per week.
The Office of Personnel Management called on agencies to “adopt a generous approach” to allowing employees to work remotely before and during religious holidays, agency director Scott Kupor said. Employees who want to take breaks during the workday while they are fasting should also get permission to work from home, he said. Agencies that opt to deny an employee’s request to work remotely for religious reasons must justify it with “evidence of significant operational impact,” he said.
It is the latest example of the Trump administration relaxing its policy that employees with desk jobs must report to the office full time. Trump railed against remote work arrangements for federal employees on the campaign trail, threatening after the election to “dismiss” staff that didn’t report to the office. The Office of Personnel Management later exempted military spouses.
Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who had led Trump’s cost-cutting effort, predicted in November that revoking “the COVID-era privilege of staying home” would trigger “a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”
More than 1 million federal employees—almost half of the federal civilian workforce—were eligible to work remotely at least part of the time as of May 2024, according to a Biden administration report. Around 10% of that workforce was entirely remote.
(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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