Newsom’s return to office is looming. State workers’ opposition is escalating
To express their displeasure with the boss, California state workers this week turned to a tried and tested method of protesting the unpopular return-to-office order: a billboard off Interstate 80.
“Gavin Newsom’s $225 Million Traffic Jam,” the sign reads, encouraging motorists to call the Governor’s Office and express opposition to the policy change, which is set to go into effect in less than four weeks.
A group of state employees paid for and erected a billboard that greets commuters driving east on Business 80-Highway 50 just before the interstate crosses the Sacramento River.
The price tag comes from the California State Auditor’s report that was issued last fall, which found that maintaining similar telework policies could potentially save $225 million annually by reducing the government’s office space footprint.
Labor, for its part, is also ramping up its opposition to the return-to-office order. The state attorneys union filed a lawsuit against departments on Friday, arguing that California agencies did not comply with the state’s signature environmental law when directing workers to return to government offices, which will result in more carbon emissions from commuters.
The Governor’s Office praised state workers’ civil engagement.
“California state workers are among the most creative and committed in the country — the backbone of our government, keeping essential services and infrastructure running,” Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement about the billboard.
Gallegos also reiterated Newsom’s defense for the change in telework policy: “In-person work makes us stronger by increasing collaboration, innovation, and accountability, leading to better service and solutions for all Californians.”
Another billboard
Before Newsom’s return-to-office order was postponed for a year in June 2025, state workers raised over $15,000 to erect several billboards in the Sacramento area protesting the change.
The billboards that an anonymous group of state workers put up last year made a similar argument: requiring state employees to commute to government offices in downtown Sacramento four days a week will cause a spike in traffic, negatively affecting everyone who lives and drives in the capital region, not just state employees.
Roughly one year later, after the governor sent a letter to his cabinet secretaries directing them to bring workers back to offices four days a week by July 1, 2026, state workers again rallied to raise funds for another billboard.
“We’ve spent years proving telework works,” said the lead organizer behind the latest project who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about potential professional repercussions from this project.
The billboard organizer, who is not the same state employee who coordinated last year’s effort, said she couldn’t reconcile the governor’s mandate with the benefits of telework to the state and its employees.
Telework has helped parents, people with disabilities and rural Californians to maintain good jobs and advance in their civil service careers, she said, and reducing the state’s office space footprint could benefit California’s persistent budget problems.
Newsom’s argument for more collaboration seems “out of touch” with reality given state workers already work from government offices part of the week, she added.
“We don’t need to be in offices four days a week to secure those benefits,” the organizer said, noting that she and other anonymous employees managed to raise $9,000 and put up the billboard in less than three weeks without ever meeting in person.
Another legal challenge
Like the billboard, other ongoing efforts to oppose the governor’s directive mirror those taken last year.
The union representing state engineers filed a lawsuit against the Newsom administration last June arguing the Governor’s Office violated state labor law by failing to meet and confer with the Professional Engineers in California Government over the impact of a return-to-office order for some workers.
The union dropped that lawsuit after the mandate was postponed for a year, but it seems the labor group that represents state attorneys was taking notes.
On Friday, that union, the California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment, filed a lawsuit against dozens of state departments in Alameda Superior Court arguing that agencies violated the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to analyze and report on the environmental impact of requiring roughly 90,000 state workers to commute to government offices four days a week.
“The Environmental Impact Report is a public process. The public, and anybody else, has input as to what the environmental impacts are and the ways to mitigate those impacts,” Matthew Gauger, CASE’s vice president, said. “The governor has failed to do that.”
Asked about the CEQA lawsuit, Gallegos, with the Governor’s Office, said in a statement, “We will review the complaint and respond appropriately if requested by the court.”
The union sent “exhaustion” letters to departments last week urging officials to conduct environmental reviews. Requiring commuters to come into offices more frequently will result in more than 15,000 additional metric tons of carbon being released into the atmosphere each month, the union argued.
Pumping that much carbon dioxide into the air is of significant public interest, Gauger said. The union is requesting a judge to pause the governor’s order before it goes into effect to provide the public an opportunity to weigh in on the potential environmental consequences of the policy.
“If it turns out that our brothers and sisters in (CASE) are required to work in the office after all that work is done, and after that analysis is done, so be it,” he said. “But the law requires that we consider these things.”
