Teleworking US Bureaucrats Resist RTO, Stoking Bipartisan Clamor

Pedestrians are sparse on downtown Washington’s once-bustling sidewalks. Storefronts are papered over with for-lease signs and light streams through vacant floors of glass office towers.

The capital city’s main business district has long relied on the steady work of governing to survive economic downturns. Now it remains strangely desolate and depopulated long after pandemic lockdowns ended.

That’s because federal employees, who account for one-in-three downtown jobs, embraced working from home and many don’t want to go back. The resulting clash over bureaucrats’ telework has thrust a workplace conflict simmering in businesses across the country into the political sphere and forged an unusual alliance, ...