The Interior Department continued this week to tighten rules on its workforce, setting an ironclad deadline for staffers to return to the office full-time and issuing guidance about how agency staffers can be disciplined for “unacceptable performance.”
Tyler Hassen, Interior’s acting assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, informed the agency’s more than 60,000 employees in an email Thursday that they must return to the office, if they have not already, by June 16. This mandate will be enforced regardless of previous union agreements or whether an employee was hired into a remote position, he said.
The move falls in line with President Donald Trump’s executive orders seeking to end remote work for federal employees and to weaken the power of unions in setting rules for the federal government workforce.
Hassen’s return-to-office directive could become one of the first real tests of Trump’s executive order issued last week that seeks to end collective bargaining with employees in numerous agencies, including parts of Interior, citing national security issues.
