Gov. Gavin Newsom to California agencies: Get ready for a four-day return to office
California agencies should prepare for state employees to work primarily in person come July 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a letter sent to his cabinet secretaries this week.
Not having sufficient space for state workers to be in offices four days a week is not an excuse for delaying or implementing his return-to-office order “to the maximum extent feasible,” Newsom’s letter said. “Importantly, all available workstations must be filled at least four days per week.”
Despite protests from state employees hoping to preserve their ability to telework, Newsom’s letter indicates that he intends to follow through with his unpopular return-to-office directive that recently led to allegations of labor law violations.
On Tuesday, SEIU Local 1000, the largest representative of state employees, filed an unfair practice charge against the Newsom administration related to the telework debate. The union alleged that the state abandoned bargaining over the issue and plans to unilaterally impose the four-day mandate.
Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, said that the majority of state employees already report to work in person at least four days per week and the expectation that all new state employees follow this same requirement will “promote trust with members of the public that state government is working effectively for them.” Less than half of California state employees, however, are eligible to work remotely.
Gallegos reiterated Newsom’s original motivation for the policy, which states that the benefits of in-person work include “enhanced collaboration, cohesion, creativity, and communication, improved opportunities for mentorship, especially for newer employees, and improved supervision and accountability.”
SEIU Local 1000 President Anica Walls said that union members recently began receiving notices from their departments that they will be expected to report to work in person four days a week.
“This was not a surprise at all,” Walls said of Newsom’s communication to departments. “We knew that this was going to be a fight from the beginning.”
The return-to-office deadline was originally set to go into effect July 2025, but that timeline was pushed back last year after the Newsom administration and unions struck a deal in the face of larger-than-expected budget problems last summer. Under that agreement, state workers took part of a leave program to cut down on the state’s compensation costs, and in exchange they got to continue working remotely three days a week for another year.
‘All available workstations must be filled’
The governor’s letter acknowledged that some departments have space constraints that will mean a portion of state employees will continue teleworking most of the week.
Newsom said that 98% of departments have sufficient space for employees to work from government offices four days a week. Less than 2% of state workers are impacted by the space shortage, according to a copy of the letter that the Governor’s Office confirmed was accurate.
The governor encouraged his cabinet to use a “structured and equitable approach” to the transitions based on what will meet departments’ operational needs, though he said the entire administration should adopt a hybrid schedule with no more than one day of telework per week.
For departments with insufficient space, the governor recommended several strategies to maximize the number of employees in offices. Those included adding desks or modifying office space to make more efficient use of workplaces; shifting the location of employees’ workstations based on surplus office space; and working with California’s Department of General Services to potentially use additional space in Sacramento.
“A rotational program where employees work in the office fewer than four days per week is not an appropriate solution,” the letter read.
Unions accuses state of labor law violations
Prior to last year’s negotiations, when the parties reached the deal to maintain the telework policy, unions had little leverage over this working condition. But since the Newsom administration used telework as a bargaining chip, SEIU Local 1000 hopes to push back against the return-to-office through the California Public Employment Relations Board.
SEIU Local 1000’s latest allegation follows a similar pattern that emerged this time last year, when various unions representing state workers accused the Newsom administration of violating the state’s Ralph C. Dills Act by imposing the return-to-office directive.
California’s labor board agreed with the state engineers unions’ claim that the state appeared to have “failed and refused to meet and confer in good faith.” Ultimately, several unions, including the Professional Engineers in California Government and SEIU Local 1000, filed lawsuits in Sacramento Superior Court against the Newsom administration. Those lawsuits were dropped when the state agreed to pause the return-to-office deadline last year.
Tuesday’s unfair practice charge accuses the state of “unlawfully limiting the scope of bargaining” by refusing to engage in negotiations with the union over mandatory subjects of bargaining, such as work location, schedules and telework. By announcing a fixed four-day, in-person requirement and rejecting the union’s proposals without considering them, the state is interfering in SEIU Local 1000’s ability to represent its members, the PERB filing states.
CalHR spokesperson Angela Musallam said that California’s labor representative does not comment on pending litigation.
“The State will review SEIU Local 1000’s filing and will respond as appropriate through the PERB process,” Musallam said in a statement.
Are departments ready to welcome workers back?
Union leaders say that the administration is not prepared to welcome state workers back.
“It seems like departments are very unprepared,” said Jacqueline Tkac, the president of the union representing state scientists. “I don’t know that there’s any clear evidence that departments are operationally ready for this expanded office work, or whether it’ll actually be any of the goals that the government’s laid out in his executive order.”
Tkac said members of California Association Professional Scientists, UAW Local 1115, have raised concerns about the availability of office space and have also raised health and safety concerns about government buildings.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this most recent push to bring workers back to offices is the lack of information from the state, Tkac said. She said CAP-UAW has requested information about where employees should report to, the number of available workstations and how many workers will be sharing desks, but has not received responses from the Newsom administration, despite the fact that the deadline for returning to the office is less than two months away.
“If this information doesn’t exist, then how can the state confidently say that they’re prepared to have this influx of in-office work?” Tkac asked.
Last year, departments submitted spreadsheets to the DGS reporting on how many workstations and offices they need to accommodate all returning employees.
A review of a handful of departments’ surveys submitted in March and April of last year found agencies needed thousands of additional workstations and hundreds of offices to comply with Newsom’s return-to-office directive by July 2025.
It’s not clear how many workstations are still needed ahead of this year’s return-to-office deadline. In January, a DGS spokesperson said that the department was not conducting additional surveys for office-space needs. The department did not respond to follow-up questions.
“The governor’s last minute decision to delay RTO last year, I think, shows he knew that his mandate was untenable, and it was never about collaboration or what was best for the people of California,” Tkac said. “It was all about politics and his political agenda.”
Despite Newsom’s most recent signal that he intends to follow through with this return-to-office order, some state workers are hoping for a similar resolution as what happened last year: a last-minute deal that delays the directive until Newsom is no longer governor.
Then, unions can bargain over the issue with the new boss.
This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 3:19 PM.
