RIGHT SPEAK: Federal Workers Return to Offices Amid Threat from Elon Musk; Growing Number of Companies Demand Employees Return to Office 5 Days a Week: ‘Domino effect’, and other C-Virus related stories

Federal workers return to offices amid threat from Elon Musk:

Federal employees across the country, many of whom have worked from home since the COVID-19 pandemic, were back at agency offices Monday under President Donald Trump’s return-to-office mandate.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading Trump's Department of Government Efficiency scouring government agencies for suspected waste, delivered a warning Monday to workers on his platform X.

“Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave,” Musk wrote.

Lee Zeldin, Trump's new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Monday on X, formerly Twitter, “Full-time, COVID-era remote work is DONE under @POTUS leadership.”

In a video he posted, Zeldin said average attendance at EPA headquarters on Mondays and Fridays last year was less than 9% of employees.

“Our spacious, beautiful EPA headquarters spans two city blocks in D.C. across five buildings,” Zeldin said. “But our hallways have been too vacant, desks empty and cubicles filled with unoccupied chairs.”

It appears at least some federal agencies are not prepared for all remote workers to return to the office.

In an email to U.S. Department of Education Federal Student Aid employees on Friday obtained by The Associated Press, agency officials noted that some regional offices in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco were not ready for workers to return. The message also noted that employees who live more than 50 miles from regional offices in some major cities would not be required to return to the office Monday. --->READ MORE HERE

Growing number of companies demand employees return to office 5 days a week: ‘Domino effect’:

A growing number of Australian workers are being ordered back into the office five days a week as employer mandates create a “domino effect” of widespread acceptance that the work-from-home party is winding to a close.

Thirty-nine percent of businesses have mandated five days a week in the office in 2025, a 3 percent jump from the previous year, while the average number of required office days has increased from 3.43 to 3.64, according to a survey of 500 Australian employers by recruitment firm Robert Half.

“The medium- to large-sized businesses mandating four to five days versus one to two, that has a domino effect on those larger corporates,” said Robert Half director Nicole Gorton.

“What I am also seeing which plays against that, kind of a dichotomy in the employment market, is that the smaller-sized enterprises are taking advantage of this domino effect as a lever to attract talent. They are more likely to be one or two days in or even fully remote. Smaller-sized enterprises don’t always have the capacity to uplift remuneration so they will lever benefits.”

Twenty-two percent now require four days, 20 percent require three days, while just 8 percent will allow two days — the working arrangement that saw the biggest decline, down from 13 percent last year.

Only 4 percent mandate one day in the office — unchanged from last year — while 7 percent of employers allow full work from home, a decline from 9 percent in 2024.

Five days in the office was the preferred option among the employers surveyed, followed by four days and three days.

Eighty-four percent of respondents said they were influenced by other businesses ordering staff back to the office, while 63 percent said resistance from workers continues to fall five years on from COVID.

Gorton said employers were definitely “back in the driver’s seat” and dictating office attendance, knowing others were doing the same.

“As workers adjust back to the pre-pandemic way of working and observe similar mandates elsewhere, they are less reluctant to oppose these mandates in their current workplace,” she said.

The survey respondents were drawn from a range of small and medium businesses as well as large private, publicly listed, and public-sector organizations across Australia. --->READ MORE HERE