J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
With the Capitol shut down to tourists, a workman performs a routine cleaning of surfaces in the Capitol Visitor Center, March 13, 2020, in Washington.
Many federal office buildings have seen a surge of employees coming back from telework after President Trump’s “return to office” (RTO) memorandum. But facilities budgets have not been adjusted to account for the changes. According to multiple federal employees, office workspaces and bathrooms in federal buildings are rapidly deteriorating, with overflowing trash cans, clogged sinks, an abundance of pests, and in some cases a lack of toilet paper and other basic products.
The president issued his memorandum forcing all federal employees back to the office on the first day of his presidency, asking all executive branch agencies “to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.” The Office of Personnel Management responded with guidance two days later, based on false claims that practically no federal employee comes to the office.
The moves not only reversed a 15-year trend toward more telework that was required by federal law, but collective-bargaining agreements that allowed for it. OPM adjusted its guidance to account for this, but mainly to give a green light for agencies to break those union agreements. Still, it has taken time for agencies to set deadlines for return-to-office policies, and many have just started over the past two weeks.
Unfortunately, custodial budgets did not rise to meet the demand.
One employee at the Department of Transportation, which implemented its 100 percent RTO starting Monday, said that bathroom maintenance has been sporadic at best. After this employee called facilities management to get one bathroom serviced, it took more than two hours, they said.
Another employee told the Prospect that an office at the Department of Labor, which actually mandated RTO back in December 2024, was “fucking gross.” In particular, sinks are not being unclogged in a timely manner, and roaches meander around the buildings.
When Trump mandated a return to work, it was thought that this was a pretext to demoralize workers by taking away benefits and flexibility, perhaps in the hope that it would lead to resignations. But the quality of the office experience itself may be adding to that.
CNN reported last week that some federal offices were not equipped with Wi-Fi or even electricity when workers returned to them, and that other offices had wires sticking out of the walls or unadjusted motion-sensor lights that led to work areas going dark randomly. Consolidation has left often crowded workspaces, a problem when federal employees need to discuss sensitive or classified information.
The General Services Administration provides custodial services to most agency office buildings. In other buildings (particularly labs or hospitals), the agencies themselves hire custodial staff, though they might also do that through GSA.
A pricing desk guide from GSA highlights its offer of custodial services to federal agencies at rates “comparable to commercial cleaning for similar commercial general use office space,” which includes five-days-a-week service for trash removal, restrooms, lobbies and common areas, loading docks, windows, floors and carpets, snow and ice removal, groundskeeping, and “integrated pest management.”
But the needs were not as great during COVID-19, when about half of all federal employees worked from home. Until Trump entered office, half of the nation’s 2.3 million federal workers were eligible for telework, according to a 2024 Office of Management and Budget report, though those employees still spent approximately 60 percent of their working hours at their job sites, on average. One in ten federal staffers were fully remote before the Trump memorandum.
Nobody appears to have thought to dial up the custodial needs for the return of those employees full-time. The continuing resolution to fund the government is also a factor; with budgets locked in at 2024 levels, facilities budgets are also tied to a time before the RTO mandate. One spokesperson for the EPA told CNN they were waiting for a full-year appropriation before making “decisions that support the return to in-person work.”
GSA did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Departments of Labor or Transportation.
The situation in federal buildings mirrors the experience at Twitter after Elon Musk purchased the company and cut custodial staff, who were unionized. Workers reportedly brought their own toilet paper to the job.
Expected reductions in force may at first glance mitigate some of the harms to understaffed federal buildings. The Education Department has fired one-third of its staff already, and total cuts may reach half the workforce; the Department of Housing and Urban Development could lose half of its workers; more than 80,000 workers at the Veterans Affairs Department could get the axe; and GSA has let go hundreds of employees in stages, just to name a few agencies.
But at the same time, GSA is seeking to terminate many of the government’s office leases, potentially sell hundreds of “non-core” federal properties, and consolidate the government’s real estate footprint. That would mean that remaining federal buildings are likely to be full of workers, and therefore need full-time custodial staffs.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the full-time president, golfed on 13 of his first 48 days in office.
