In summary
Many California public employees want more flexibility to work from home than Gov. Gavin Newsom’s return-to-office policy allows. He vetoed a bill that would have encouraged departments to set their own policies.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom held firm to his return-to-office mandate for California state workers and vetoed a union-supported bill that would have given state departments more authority to set their own telework policies.
In some ways the governor’s veto of Assembly Bill 1729 was unsurprising: Despite protests from public employees who contend they’re just as effective working at home, Newsom has maintained that he wants them in the office.
The bill wouldn’t have nullified his policy completely, but it would have chipped away at the blanket four-day-a-week in-office policy for state employees that went into effect in July.
The bill would have required agencies to provide written justification if employees must work in-office, and the state’s Department of General Services would have had to create a dashboard to display the cost-effectiveness and other benefits of state telework programs.
Newsom in his veto message wrote that he “fundamentally” believes “in-person collaboration is an essential part of a productive and effective workplace.”
“This measure, by limiting departmental flexibility and encouraging telework to be the default work arrangement, takes the state’s telework policy in the wrong direction,” he wrote.
Newsom embraced remote work for public employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, when tens of thousands of state workers abruptly shifted to working from home. He called them back to the office two days a week in 2024.
Many state workers enjoyed the flexibility after the pandemic receded. They also stressed that telework saved taxpayers money. A 2025 audit found the state would save $225 million a year by allowing more telework.
The telework bill “would save on office leases and parking, it would save and reduce commute times and vehicle emissions, it would maintain and improve productivity, and it would improve worker recruitment and retention,” said Sen. Angelique Ashby, a Sacramento Democrat.
Newsom’s veto comes as state government’s largest union, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, is asking its members to authorize a strike. It represents about 100,000 workers and is at odds with Newsom over pay and remote work.
“A blanket mandate does not work for all the jobs that our workers do,” Local 1000 President Anica Walls told CalMatters in July about Newsom’s return-to-office policy. “Let the departments decide.”
Besides Newsom, about a dozen Republican and Democratic lawmakers also opposed the remote work bill. Sen. Catherine Blakespear said that shifting telework as the default policy by requiring state agencies to justify when workers must be in the office was “going too far.”
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“We had a tremendous upheaval and difficulty around remote classrooms,” said the Encinitas Democrat during the bill’s final Assembly floor vote in August. “The reality is that … people think that remote work will improve their mental health. But it substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health.”
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