Work from home

As the talk about cutting government waste rises to a fever pitch the news centers around cutting staff which is a very small part of the waste but gets an inordinate amount of attention. For example about 50 percent of the people work from home as a product of the Covid. The question is how does the boss know if their working. The extremes recently came into public when mouse jigglers were discovered. This is a program which allows the computer to move the mouse periodically to avoid the computer from going to sleep so anyone checking will think someone is working. Many government employees are both civil service and unionized. In one very rare example a small unionized group had a contract that said you must work one day per month in the office. Some enterprising workers set up to work the last day of the month and the first day of the next month. This allowed them to relocate out of the expensive DC area and move to a low income state like Tenn and commute once every two months to the office. People are very creative. If the rules are changed and people are forced to work in the office many of these employees will resign and look for jobs near their new home. They won't want to go back to the high cost area and fight traffic two hours everyday.