Walz Calls State Employees Back to the Office 50% of the Time
JPMorgan Chase is calling workers back to the office five days a week. So is Amazon. The Trump administration, too, is calling federal workers back to the office, whether they have a space to work or not.
Now, Gov. Tim Walz is following suit with Minnesota state employees, though he’s stopped short of a five-day mandate.
On Tuesday, the governor announced that state agency employees will be expected to work in-person for at least 50% of their scheduled workdays. Walz billed the move as a way to foster “collaboration” and “strong organizational cultures.”
His office also said the return will “support the economic vitality of office districts like downtown Saint Paul, bringing foot traffic back to businesses and public spaces.”
To be sure, downtown St. Paul has faced its share of issues in the era of hybrid and remote work. The state of Minnesota remains the largest employer in downtown St. Paul, and the absence of the usual stream workers has been detrimental to businesses there. Colliers reported that the central business district of St. Paul had an office vacancy rate of 28.8% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Whether state employees will run into the same spacing issues as federal ones isn’t yet clear. “Agencies will be looking at their available space over the next several weeks,” said Minnesota Management and Budget spokesman Patrick Hogan in an email. “Some might need to look at pre-determined in-person scheduling or other solutions as a way of ensuring there is sufficient seating on any given day to accommodate increased in-person work.”
The state executive branch has about 39,000 employees, and, for what it’s worth, only 40% of them telework as of today, according to Hogan. How many of those employees work in downtown St. Paul properties isn’t clear, and the state doesn’t keep tabs on it. “MMB doesn’t haven’t that level of granularity about state employees,” Hogan said.
Joe Spencer, president of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance, welcomed the news, though he acknowledged it won’t be a “silver bullet” for the many problems plaguing the central core of Minnesota’s capital city.
“I think we’re going to see a meaningful bump [in activity] when we see workers returning,” Spencer said.
In downtown, state workers will soon join city staffers, who Mayor Melvin Carter has required to return to the office three days a week starting April 1.
Spencer said it’s important not to “paint all of downtown with one stroke.”
“We certainly have a number of distressed properties, especially in the core, and especially those left behind by Madison Equities,” Carter said. “That is a serious crisis.”
But not everyone is celebrating the governor’s policy change. Leaders with two unions representing state employees said they’re “appalled and disgusted” by Walz’s decision.
“Let’s call this what it really is: This is a unilateral move by a bad boss without consultation or consideration of the very staff he claims to care deeply about investing in,” said Megan Dayton, president of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) union, in a statement. “I never thought the same public worker attacks and micromanaging mannerisms of our federal administration would be mirrored in Minnesota.”
The statement was issued on behalf of MAPE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Together, they represent about 40,000 state employees, they said in the statement.
Dayton told the Minnesota Reformer that her union will fight the new policy “with everything we have,” and that could include litigation.
MAPE is supposed to begin negotiating a new contract with the state on April 15, the Pioneer Press reported.
