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In one big way, Gov. Gavin Newsom is tougher on public employee unions than his Republican counterpart in Texas: Making state workers show up in the office.
After facing strong opposition from workers, it took Texas Gov. Greg Abbott three months to reverse his 2025 ban on remote work for state employees. But Newsom, whose return-to-office mandate has been in effect since July 1, shows no signs of backing down.
It’s a stance that has upset — and at times befuddled — some state workers who are calling for the governor to scrap the four-day-a-week in-office policy as they hammer out new labor agreements.
Typically, they’re allies to the Democratic governor. They helped him fight off a recall in 2021, and they encouraged their members to vote for him against his Republican opponents.
More importantly to them, they maintain they’re just as effective at home, which they say they proved when Newsom ordered them to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s confusing to people when they think that they’ve done a great job to be told, ‘Well we don’t think it’s good enough and you should incur going back into the office,’” said D’Arcy McLeod, chairperson of the Professional Engineers in California Government’s bargaining team.
Roughly 108,000 of California’s more than 245,900 state employees are affected by the mandate, according to the state human resources department. The others generally already are required to work at a specific location five days a week, including prison, firefighting, law enforcement, and custodial employees.
Service Employees International Union Local 1000, California’s largest state worker union, represents 96,000 employees and is in contract negotiations. It argues that remote work saves taxpayers and employees money, reduces traffic and lowers emissions — all without affecting productivity.
Newsom’s mandate allows exemptions on a case-by-case basis, including for those who live 50 miles or farther from their worksite, or who conduct work outside the office, such as telehealth providers and inspectors. Public transportation costs for commuting are also reimbursable.
But that isn’t enough for SEIU, which in May filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board. It also threw its support behind a bill that would give state agencies more authority to shape their hybrid work policies.
“A blanket mandate does not work for all the jobs that our workers do,” said Anica Walls, the union’s president. “Let the departments decide.”
California exceptionalism?
States have taken different approaches to calling workers back to the office since the pandemic. Republican-led Nevada and Democratic-led New Mexico require state employees to be in the office five days a week, for example. Utah with a Republican governor wants them at the office twice a week.
But Newsom’s blanket policy appears to be an outlier among other blue states with robust public employee unions: Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington state still embrace remote work in some capacity. It also differs from Texas, a Republican-led state that Newsom has contrasted with California.
A few months after President Donald Trump began his second term and called for federal employees to return to the office, Abbott banned remote work for Texas state employees. But following a multi-agency survey that found that telework did not curb productivity and helped reduce turnover, Abbott walked back the move.
Newsom “is a man who has talked about the importance of innovation, wrote an entire book about government adapting to technology and providing services in a more cost-effective way,” said Ted Toppin, the executive director of the engineers union.
“It strikes me as interesting and ironic that Texas would have a more modern, flexible and efficient take on state employee telework.”
Despite a state audit that concluded that telework could save California as much as $225 million a year, Newsom moved forward with his March 2025 executive order directing workers back into the office at least four days a week.
In May during a state budget presentation, Newsom told reporters that he is “empathetic to change,” but that returning to the office helps build a sense of community. The governor has also contended that in-person work fosters collaboration, accountability and helps boost small businesses.
McLeod said he’s surprised Newsom remains resolute to the mandate even after the audit found that remote work proved successful during and after the pandemic.
“Every single Newsom appointed official that testified for the state auditor indicated that … the work that was being delivered during telework was substantially of higher quality and more efficient,” said McLeod of the engineers union.
What unions wanted from Newsom
In some ways the rift echoes labor disputes from California’s last two governors.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came out swinging against public employees with unsuccessful ballot measures that were designed to cut their influence. He later imposed unpaid furloughs on public employees during the Great Recession.
Then Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown battled with unions over pensions, passing a law that curbed retirement benefits and required workers to chip in more for their benefits. He had a reputation for being stingy with raises, too.
Public employee unions were optimistic about Newsom. He offered concessions when he asked workers for temporary pay reductions during the pandemic, gave one-time bonuses to many employees and negotiated contracts that often included goodies for workers in hard-to-fill positions even if the deals didn’t please everyone.
Then came the fight over returning to the office.
Besides union leaders, Newsom’s steadfast commitment to in-person work has baffled Steve Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant who has worked with public employee unions on pension issues. For Newsom, a Democratic politician who is likely eyeing a bid for the presidency, “it’s political malpractice to come across as anti-labor,” said Maviglio.
“The only thing you’ll be able to say is that ‘I stood up to state workers,’ which isn’t particularly helpful in a Democratic primary where labor is the key constituency nationwide for Democrats.”
But for Will Swaim, chief executive of the libertarian think tank California Policy Center, Newsom’s fight with the unions signals something larger than remote work. Rather, it is a “policy disagreement that has turned into a foundational challenge to democracy,” said Swaim.
SEIU 1000 has donated at least $2 million to current members of the Legislature, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. In addition to its contract, the union is pushing for more flexible telework policies through a legislative proposal currently in the state Senate.
Through its campaign donations and labor talks, SEIU is attempting to wrest control from Newsom, a publicly elected official, over who gets to shape policies over government work, according to Swaim.
“That’s simply undemocratic,” said Swaim. “I don’t know anybody out there who believes that in their jobs they could tell their boss, ‘I’m not coming to the office, no matter what you want.’ It just doesn’t fly.”
But bosses should work to accommodate current employees, according to SEIU president Walls — especially if they have presumably bigger ambitions to oversee even more workers.
“As a state employee I would have trouble voting for someone who would be the boss of federal employees when I know he hasn’t shown to be a stellar employer to state employees,” said Walls.
