Newsom to CA State Employees: Okay, Everybody Back in the Pool!

This is SO on-brand for California, and Newsom’s peculiar trademark, laidback incompetence, it just blows the mind.

It’s been six long years since COVID, masks, six feet separation in line, social distancing, mandated vaxxes, and the oleaginous governor arresting solitary surfers on deserted beaches.

You know what he hasn’t done in all that time?

Well, besides building a high-speed rail to San Francisco. Or even Bakersfield?

Tell state employees and then enforce them getting their rarified tushies back to the office when everyone in the state, including the few Silicon Valley tech behemoths who haven’t packed up and left yet, has all issued Return to Office orders (RTOs), some in varying phases of implementation.

But six years.

Dang.

Newsom finally pulled the trigger after beating around the bush and folding in the face of union resistance. Nothing happened with any return-to-normal urgency whatsoever.

…Governor Newsom issued orders in 2024–2025 pushing for more in-office time: initially 2 days each week, then 4 days each week starting July 1, 2025-2026 for most telework-eligible staff.

SEIU Local 1000 union agreements delayed the full 4-day in-office mandate until at least July 1, 2026 for many workers. Departments largely reverted to pre-March 2025 telework agreements during the pause.

This means a significant portion of eligible employees – likely tens of thousands – are still on hybrid or remote-friendly schedules right now, though full remote (5 days a week) is less common than early pandemic peaks.

In March 2025, five years after his original Covid lockdown order, sending nearly the entire state workforce of “non-essential” workers packing in 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued his first “get back to the office” order… but it was not until July 1, 2025, and only 4 days a week.

Newsom’s original 2020 lockdown order locked down private sector businesses, K-12 schools, and colleges and universities, most of which were already back at work and school by the time he lifted his original lockdown order February 28, 2023 – three years later.

Newsom’s original return-to-the-office executive order requires “all agencies and departments within his Administration to update their hybrid telework policies to a default of at least four days per week by July 1, 2025. The order establishes a four-day-per-week in-office expectation, with further telework flexibilities granted on a case-by-case basis in light of individual circumstances, consistent with the executive order and existing family-friendly employment policies and legal obligations.”

The hilarious thing, as my girlfriend Katy Grimes at the California Globe points out, no one has the first clue how many state employees they’re even talking about. 

How many state employees are well talking about? Well, that number isn’t readily available.

Déjà Vu: Gov. Newsom Orders State Workers Return-to-Office 6 Years After Original Lockdown Order.

State Controller: there is no single precise public figure for exactly how many California state employees are working fully or primarily remotely.@CaliforniaGlobe… https://t.co/lAQwnFrj3i

— California Globe (@CaliforniaGlobe) June 22, 2026

It’s kind of like trying to get an answer to, ‘What happened to all the billions of dollars to fix homelessness?’

And the state’s answer is:

I DUNNO – WHUT?

Here comes Act Two of Newsom’s comedy in two parts – the SEIU, which represents a good number (don’t ask how many, although I’m sure union bean counters know precisely) of state employees, say they’re walkin’ if they’re forced (oh, the cruelty!) to be at work.

YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US – A DIRE PICTURE

California Union Boss Threatens Mass Exodus Over Newsom’s Return-to-Work Order: “The State Needs to Be Ready”

California state workers have enjoyed years of cushy hybrid schedules while taxpayers foot the bill for empty offices and sluggish services. Now Governor Gavin Newsom is… pic.twitter.com/NsrxHQWHBz

— Mike Netter (@nettermike) June 22, 2026

… Now Governor Gavin Newsom is finally cracking down with a four-day in-office mandate starting July 1, and the union is crying foul.

SEIU Local 1000 President Anica Walls delivered the dramatic warning in a TV interview: “I feel like there will be a mass exodus. I feel like the state needs to be ready for a mass exodus.”

Walls continued, painting a dire picture for families and retirees: “We have individuals who I think have been teetering on retirement, who look at this four days a week when they’ve been doing their job efficiently in a hybrid schedule, will probably send them into a retirement in some cases. I also feel like individuals who took jobs and live more than 40 miles away may have to really look at whether or not they’re going to be able to keep those jobs. And so I think for families, like I said, the uncertainty can be a little scary.”

She added that workers would still try to hang on: “Nonetheless, I don’t doubt that members where they have to will definitely do everything that they can to maintain their positions and to do the jobs that they were hired to do.”

Imagine that – ‘Doing the job you were hired to do.’ What a concept. And unless you were specifically hired to do it as a teleworker, there is an expectation that your job is somewhere other than your kitchen table eventually, particularly with the ineffectual governor’s executive orders hanging out there in space in some shape or form for  damn near five years.

But, no.

Fury has been ‘sparked.’

California state workers are warning Gov. Gavin Newsom could face a “mass exodus” after ordering employees back to the office four days a week beginning July 1. pic.twitter.com/AjluLu3ybM

— Mike Netter (@nettermike) June 22, 2026

If SEIU members are forced – FORCED, mind you – to come into the office, dogs and cats will live together, and unholy traffic jams will commence.

…A billboard off a Sacramento highway warns of future traffic jams caused by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order. State workers argue they have been working efficiently under hybrid schedules since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Since COVID we have been working and doing the jobs and being efficient and doing the jobs to keep California running,” said Anica Walls, the president of SEIU Local 1000, which represents state workers in Sacramento. “This mandate as overarching as it does not give departments the space to bring back our workers as needed.”

It’s not clear which departments exactly are struggling with space and how the Newsom administration is handling it. A spokesman with California’s Government Operations Agency declined an interview request with California Politics 360.

At his budget presentation in May, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the challenges of returning to the office but emphasized the benefits of in-person work.

“Change is hard. I’m empathetic” he said. “Everyone has unique criteria, circumstance. We try to accommodate for that. I mean, four days a week, nice to see you again. I mean, would be nice to see you again, nice to see you again, nice to run into you in the hall, nice to develop a relationship, nice not feel so alone,” Newsom said.

From an economic perspective, the return-to-office mandate could benefit local businesses, according to Robert Heidt, president of the Sacramento Metro Chamber.

“There is a lot of value in bringing people back to the office. The ebb and flow. The next generation of workforce. There is a value in experiencing by observation. Even me as the CEO, if I wasn’t here every day, there are things I wouldn’t notice or pick up or see in the office,” Heidt said.

“I can’t imagine that we can sustain an acceptable level of business and commerce with everyone remote. It just doesn’t make sense,” he added.

Oh, when has sense come into anything?

And, hello. After six years, people get settled into a routine.

As this is California, the legislature is working at cross purposes with the RTO. They’re busy whipping up all sorts of data charts, and a nifty piece of legislation to enable everyone to stay right where they are…however many of them there are, I mean. It’s important that the state ‘provide telework options or justify why they do not‘ to its employees.

Gobsmacking.

Of course, this completely turns the traditional employer/employee contract on its head, but hey – it’s California.

…State workers packed committee hearings at the Capitol this week, advocating for a law that would require state agencies to provide telework options or justify why specific roles must be performed in-office. Democratic Assemblyman Alex Lee, who authored the bill AB 1729, said the issue is critical for many state employees.

“I have heard from so many state workers from even the Bay Area all up and down the state who said this is the thing that matters the most to them,” Lee said. “They don’t want to move. They love their job, but they don’t, they aren’t willing to move after working 4-5 years in state service.”

Lee’s proposal also requires the state to establish an online dashboard to show how much taxpayer money is saved with telework. Lee and SEIU have estimated remote work saves the state up to $225 million a year.

When asked about concerns that state workers might misuse telework arrangement, Walls defended her members.

“I have no doubt that our members are in the spaces they need to be and to successfully produce and do the job that they are assigned to do,” Walls said.

FOUR days a week is what they’re bitching about.

The rhetoric is ridiculous.

California state workers union warns of mass exodus with Newsom’s return to office order.

California state workers are challenging a new mandate requiring them to return to the office four days a week starting July 1, as lawmakers advance a bill to ensure telework options. pic.twitter.com/z0EgZi34Nc

— BùTtęrß Tøó 🇺🇸 (@ButtersToo2) June 22, 2026

And the ‘WAAH, or we leave!’ is something only a union would dare pull.

The COVID “emergency” ended years ago . . . except in the fevered minds of union bosses at the SEIU.

Government union officials in California are threatening a “mass exodus” because Gov. Newsom wants state employees to return to the office four days a week. Oh, my. The…

— National Right to Work Committee (@Right2Work) June 23, 2026

…The humanity. 

Now, SEIU bosses in California are pressuring politicians to pass a law requiring agencies to justify why employees should have to work in the office. 

Imagine if private-sector workers demanded a state law forcing their employers to justify why they had to come to work.

That’s the problem with government unions. They don’t just bargain with government officials; they lobby and elect the very politicians they bargain with.  Now they’re blackmailing the state, threatening a “mass exodus” because state employees might have to show up to the office four days a week. 

This isn’t collective bargaining. It’s political blackmail . . . and the perfect example of why unions have no place in government.

Over four days a week after six years of all these thousands of people getting to sit home on the job.

However many of them there are, I mean.

To be determined later.

Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.

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