Will public sector workers return to their desks for Donald Trump?

So much for the theory that Covid would change working practices for good: that we would divide our time between the office and our sofas – or work remotely all the time. The writing was on the wall when Zoom – the very business which profited most from remote working during the pandemic – ordered its staff back into the office in 2023. Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Twitter and many others followed.

It seems the public sector will no longer be a sanctuary, either, now that Donald Trump is using flexible working as a device to shrink the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management has issued an ultimatum – alongside a generous redundancy offer – telling federal workers either to return to the office full-time or to resign. If they take redundancy there is an inducement: they can leave their jobs now but continue to be paid until the end of September.