The Democratic National Committee (DNC) ordered its employees in the Washington D.C. area return to work at its headquarters in February 2026 — only to be met with widespread fury from both staff members and their union.
DNC chairman Ken Martin announced Wednesday in a staff-wide meeting employees would be expected to work five days a week from the committee’s Capitol Hill office, and complaints from both in-person employees and those attending the meeting via Zoom flooded in immediately, according to the New York Times (NYT). A cascade of thumbs down emojis from online attendees piled up on the screen, and the Employees International Union blasted the move as “callous.”
During the meeting, Martin told disgruntled employees if they did not want to return to work, they should consider finding employment elsewhere. It will be the first time since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic that workers at the DNC will be required to work in the office.
“It was shocking to see the DNC chair disregard staff’s valid concerns on today’s team call,” the union wrote to the Times. “DNC staff worked extremely hard to support historic wins for Democrats up and down the ballot last Tuesday, and this change feels especially callous considering the current economic conditions created by the Trump administration.”
The DNC did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Republican National Committee (RNC) National Press Secretary Kiersten Pels said the DNC’s situation was “hilarious” in a Thursday X post.
“DNC staffers are ‘shocked’ at being expected to show up to work during a midterm campaign cycle. The best part is that they still get two full months before they actually have to get out of bed 5 days a week,” Pels wrote. “Is this a political committee or a daycare?”
After hearing the call to return to headquarters, one DNC staffer told Martin the party had won the 2020 presidential election despite everyone working from home, suggesting the stay at home policy should continue through the 2028 presidential election, the NYT reported.
Martin confirmed remote work accommodations would be allowed on a case-by-case basis, according to the NYT, but the shift away from remote work is not new. President Donald Trump, on the first day of his second term, issued a memorandum to stop most remote work policies for workers in the executive branch.
The push to return to in-person work has brought steep economic benefits to the nation’s capital. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority closed out fiscal year 2025 with a 9% increase in ridership compared to 2024, with 46 consecutive months of ridership growth as workers returned to downtown offices.
Local businesses in the downtown D.C. area also saw an increase in revenue as foot traffic grew, allowing for workers to grab lunch at local businesses, attend happy hours after work, or pick up dry cleaning on their way home. The growth businesses saw following Trump’s order to return to offices even heightened their sense of concern over the government shutdown’s impacts on federal workers’ presence downtown before the 43-day funding lapse even began.
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