A taxpayer-funded sob story about federal workers being cruelly required to return to work at (gasp!) the office every single day aired earlier this week on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition show, headlined “Trump wants federal workers back the office, meaning longer days and added expenses.” But the single example offered wasn't exactly the stuff of a nightmare commute.
Host A Martinez introduced the brief story.
A Martinez: Federal agencies have submitted plans for their workers to return to the office full time for the first time since the pandemic, as directed by President Trump. That means thousands of government workers will likely descend on Washington each day. Scott Maucione from member station WYPR reports from Baltimore.
Maryland public radio reporter Maucione presumably went out looking for sympathetic stories, but the thin gruel of anecdotes he returned with wasn't exactly reminiscent of the Trail of Tears (Twenty minutes in the car!). Maucione actually had to grant dubious anonymity to this hard-put female bureaucrat for his radio report.
Scott Maucione: It takes Lane 20 minutes to drive to the train station in Baltimore.
Lane: The train ride is anywhere from about 40 minutes to an hour. I wake up at 4:10 in the morning and I get to work bright and early between about 6:00 and 6:15.
Maucione: Lane's a Federal employee and works in-person two days a week, a common setup for some Federal workers. NPR is only using her middle name because she fears speaking out about the new telework policies may jeopardize her job. Lane says she works those two in-person days back-to-back, finishing up at the office around 3:00 p.m. and getting back home around 5:00.
Lane: You know, I'm so exhausted at the end of the day. By that third morning when I'm, you know, waking up and teleworking, I am just so brain dead. It's actually hard to focus that next day. I cannot imagine trying to get in the car and go in a third day.
Not exactly an inspiring work ethic there. Maucione makes it sound like a trial for federal workers to actually go into work every day, though even in the post-COVID age of telecommuting, millions of private sector Americans have no choice.
Maucione: Lane, like many of the more than 300,000 Federal employees in the surrounding DC area, may have to find a way to make it into the office five days a week, depending on how agencies implement a new executive memo from the Trump administration….
He continued nonsensically:
Maucione: The Trump administration's memo claims that telework has degraded government services and made it difficult to supervise workers. However, Federal agencies have had telework policies and agreements with employees for 15 years. The Office of Personnel Management has produced numerous studies that show Federal teleworking improves morale, retention and stress.
But what about the key metric of productivity? "Public" broadcasting inevitably sides with bureaucrats and not the people that pay for them.
This story, irrationally sympathetic to federal workers and dismissive of taxpayer concerns, is reminiscent of the many one-sided media stories of the plight of federal workers during government shutdowns, often instigated by Republican attempts to slow the growth of federal program spending.
Here's a deathless example from 1995: “On December 22 -- just six days after the start of the second shutdown -- ABC’s Jack Smith lamented on World News Tonight: “The shutdown now has a human face. Joe Skattleberry and his wife Lisa both work for the government. Both have been furloughed. They can’t afford a Christmas tree.”
