The Department of the Air Force laid out plans in a new memo to send thousands of civilians and service members back to full-time in-person work by the end of the week, following a directive from President Donald Trump.
Issued Feb. 1, the memo directs all commanders or directors of major commands, field operating activities, direct reporting units, and field commands to cancel telework and remote work agreements and direct employees within 50 miles of their official worksite to report in-person no later than Feb. 7.
However, a string of policy exceptions, facility limitations, and collective bargaining agreements with civilian employees could make fully implementing the memo a long and idiosyncratic process.
First off, the Air Force has to get a handle on how big its remote workforce is. The memo directs commands to find out the number of civilians, Airmen, and Guardians “on remote agreements or arrangements,” and what would be the most appropriate in-person worksite to assign them.
The call for more information does not seem to distinguish between telework, where employees work in-person part of the time, and remote work, where employees never come into the office. Headquarters Air Force set a tight deadline of Feb. 3 for commands to submit the information, just two days after the memo came out.
The public affairs office for the Secretary of the Air Force did not immediately respond when asked if any telework statistics were available. But according to a 2024 report by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, about 74,000 of 155,000 civilian employees who worked for the Air Force in fiscal year 2023, teleworked, or roughly 48 percent—though the report acknowledged some employees may have been counted twice.
Commands also have to form a plan to overcome risks or resource constraints to bringing workers back, such as not enough suitable office space. The memo directs commands to “consider use of alternative options to maximize facility space, such as alternative work schedules, additional workstations in existing facilities, or other alternate duty locations.”
Some commands may have to seek exemptions based on office space, mission impact, or other compelling needs. The memo said further guidance will be forthcoming regarding how to submit exemption requests. The exemptions will require approval by the Secretary of Defense, which could also constitute a large bureaucratic hurdle considering the other sweeping changes and efforts new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pursuing early in his tenure.
The Air Force scrambled to embrace telework and remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the aftermath, some leaders suggested the service would continue to use the arrangements—albeit reduced from pandemic highs—to attract or retain talent and save on infrastructure costs.
In 2021, the Department of the Air Force updated its regulations on telework and remote work, giving squadron commanders the authority to approve such arrangements while providing examples of work that could be eligible. The Feb. 1 memo rescinded that instruction until an updated one can be worked out.
Another challenge could be renegotiating contracts with unionized civilians—Trump has clashed with government labor unions early in his term, seeking to declare telework provisions in union contracts invalid, cancel contracts negotiated at the end of the Biden administration, and offer buyouts to more than 2 million government workers despite union criticism.
For its part, the Air Force memo directs commands to review collective bargaining agreements “in preparation to take necessary steps to bring these CBAs into compliance with the [presidential memo].” The memo also directs commands to “initiate return to work bargaining.”
Tens of thousands of Air Force civilians are covered by union contracts. Council 214 of the American Federation of Government Employees, for example, is a bargaining unit of about 35,000 employees in both white and blue collar roles working at Air Force Materiel Command locations across the country.
AFMC was one of the leading proponents of telework during the pandemic and immediately afterwards, as the office work of acquisition translated well.
“Post pandemic it was demonstrated that employees could be highly effective performing their work via telework,” wrote the 2024 OPM report about telework across the service. “Leadership recognized the potential benefits of leveraging the temporarily increased telework posture into a more permanent posture, leading to new policy guidance being developed.”
That started to change in 2022 at AFMC when commander Gen. Duke Z. Richardson encouraged supervisors “to revisit the telework posture and determine the optimal blend for individuals, teams, centers, and the headquarters.”
The general expectation was for service members and civilians to spend most of their time in the office, but Richardson did not have an exact ratio for the entire command to pursue. Only 10 percent of civilian federal workers are in fully remote positions, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.