Newsom Signs Four-Day-Per-Week Office Mandate for Thousands of Calif. Workers
The governor’s administration had already called on state employees to return to the office two days per week last spring
By Nick Trombola March 4, 2025 2:20 pm
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken a page out of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s recent playbook with a new executive order aimed at bringing state employees back to the office.
Starting July 1, all employees within the Newsom administration must report to their offices in-person at least four days per week, with exceptions granted on a case-by-case basis. About 224,000 people work for the State of California, more than half of whom already work in-person every day, according to Newsom’s office. His new order builds upon his administration’s call last spring for state workers to return to in-person work at least two days per week.
The move comes as many standard-bearing businesses and corporations like Amazon (AMZN) and J.P. Morgan Chase end remote-work policies and will start to require in-office work this year.
“In-person work makes us all stronger, period,” Newsom said in a statement. “When we work together, collaboration improves, innovation thrives and accountability increases. That means better service, better solutions and better results for Californians, while still allowing flexibility.”
As part of the return-to-office mandate, state agencies must create plans to accommodate their newly returned employees, including identifying commute options and workspace needs. Newsom has also directed California’s Department of Human Services to “streamline” the state hiring process for former federal employees in roles like firefighting, weather forecasting and forest management.
Newsom’s order is likely to face some legal challenges, particularly from labor unions representing California state workers, though they may ultimately find their hands tied.
An arbitration decision last year between the (CalPERS), which in 2022 called upon its employees to work in-person at least three days per week, and California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment (CASE) — a union representing state legal workers — reinforced the state’s mandate ability. The decision essentially allows government agencies to compel workers to return to the office, even if labor contracts include the right to work from home. CASE has since appealed the decision, though the union faces an uphill climb.
CASE called Newsom’s latest order “sudden” and “misguided,” claiming that it disregards the benefits of remote work for its members and could make hiring new state legal workers more difficult.
“Forcing state attorneys, judges and hearing officers back into the office under the guise of ‘efficiency’ is arbitrary and counterproductive,” Timothy O’Connor, president of CASE’s board of directors, said in a statement. “The governor’s order is not aimed at improving services — it’s about optics. This latest decision to take away one of the few non-financial benefits of working for the state, telework, will make it harder to recruit attorneys at the current pay levels.”
The governor’s mandate is just the latest call among the public and private sectors for employees to return to in-person work. Within the first few days of his second term, for example, President Trump signed an executive order requiring that most federal employees within the executive branch come back to the office. Yet the move was also a scheme to coerce many of the 1.1 million federal employees eligible for telework to quit rather than adhere to the mandate, part of Trump and Musk’s effort to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
