*

President Donald Trump orders federal workers to return to

the

office five days a week

*

Trump also revives 'Schedule F' plan to weaken job

protections

*

Experts and union officials say the move will drive

qualified

employees out of public service

(Adds news of Schedule F in paragraph 3, second statement

details in paragraph 5)

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump

has ordered federal workers to return to the office five days a

week and weakened job protections for civil servants, the first

salvoes in his campaign to gut the federal bureaucracy.

The one-two punch would force large numbers of white-collar

government employees to forfeit remote working arrangements,

reversing a trend that took off in the early stages of the

COVID-19 pandemic.

If upheld by the courts, the measures could also strip

mid-level officials of the legal guarantees that generally keep

them insulated from ideological purges.

Trump's allies have said the return-to-work mandate and the

stripping of civil service protections - widely known as

"Schedule F" - is intended to help the president replace

long-serving government workers with loyalists faithful only to

his agenda.

In a brief statement posted to the White House website,

Trump ordered all heads of departments and agencies to, "as soon

as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote

work arrangements and require employees to return to work

in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time

basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make

exemptions they deem necessary."

A second statement said that any power government officials

have "is delegated by the President, and they must be

accountable to the President."

It largely reinstates a late 2020 administrative order

from Trump's first term that Joe Biden rescinded when he took

power and is almost certain to draw swift pushback and

litigation.

The two orders are being paired with a hiring freeze and the

creation of an advisory body - dubbed the Department of

Government Efficiency (DOGE) - which is meant to help Trump take

huge chunks out of the federal government and eliminate some

agencies wholesale.

Experts say the aggregate effect of the changes will be to

drive frustrated government employees out of their jobs, a goal

the Trump team is explicitly gunning for.

LOSS OF TOP TALENT

Tesla CEO Elon Musk - who chairs DOGE - recently

predicted that revoking "the COVID-era privilege" of telework

would trigger "a wave of voluntary terminations that we

welcome."

Not all government workers would be covered by the

return-to-office mandate. A quarter of the federal workforce is

unionized and many are covered by bargaining agreements that

allow for remote work or hybrid arrangements.

However, Russell Vought, Trump's nominee for Office of

Management and Budget (OMB), has hinted at efforts to unwind

those deals, telling lawmakers that the agreements struck during

the Joe Biden administration were "a concerning phenomenon, and

one that we are looking at very closely."

Republicans have spent decades lampooning federal

employees as lazy bureaucrats; Trump's Make America Great Again

(MAGA) movement has ratcheted the criticism to the next level,

with the president calling federal employees "crooked" and

"dishonest."

There was sustained cheering when Trump signed the executive

order ordering the workers to return to office. Trump held the

document aloft with a wry smile as the applause rang out around

the arena.

"The politics play well with the MAGA crowd, because

work-from-home workers tend to be higher educated," said

Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University

who studies labor and management issues.

While Trump and other Republicans have suggested that remote

work is rampant among federal employees, government data shows

that it is more limited. About 46% of federal workers, or 1.1

million people, are eligible for remote work, and about 228,000

of them are fully remote, according to a report issued by the

White House Office of Management and Budget in August.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a

federal employee union, said hybrid working arrangements were a

"key tool" for attracting America's best employees.

"Restricting the use of hybrid work arrangements will make

it harder for federal agencies to compete for top talent," it

said in an email.

Bloom said that the Trump administration's efforts to coerce

the federal workforce would likely spark lots of fights,

dismissals and resignations - ultimately leading to a lower

quality of government service for Americans across the board and

potential failures of core safety and social security functions.

"I think there's going to be a lot of problems with

government services falling apart," Bloom said. "God help anyone

who's interacting with the federal government."