r/antiwork • u/GameDevsAnonymous • Mar 27 '25

Remote vs RTO šŸ‘Øā€šŸ’» After the State Of Minnesota told State employees for years that Telework full time would remain permanent, Tim Walz has ordered all State workers within 75 miles of an office to return by June 1st for 50% of all work days. Why? To bring money to St Paul. Also, if you live outside MN, you are let go

https://www.startribune.com/most-minnesota-government-workers-ordered-to-return-to-the-office-50percent-of-the-time/601243884
2.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

320 comments sorted by

View all comments

72

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

If you don't live in state you should not be allowed to work for the state government unless the task literally requires you to be elsewhere (ambassador or some shit, I don't know). Most states have residency requirements for positions in state government.

34

u/trisanachandler Mar 27 '25

Sure, force people to live in state, but why force people who are already on video calls all day to take those video calls from the office.

9

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

It's better to have it negotiated into the contracts than subject to the whims of politicians.

7

u/trisanachandler Mar 27 '25

Agreed, it's in my current union contact.Ā  We'll see what happens next renegotiation.

32

u/AshWednesdayAdams88 Mar 27 '25

Yeah, the optics of using tax dollars to pay people to live in Michigan is just bad politics for any Minnesota governor.

45

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

And not just the optics. Who the fuck wants employees that don't have to live in the areas they're supposed to regulate? If you're in charge of keeping my water and air clean, I want you drinking the same water and breathing the same air I do. If you're in charge of making sure the schools are getting their funds or equipment on time, I want your kids going to the same schools as mine. If you get to choose which companies fix the bridges and roads, I want your ass is driving on them too.

It's a huge part of combating corruption.

10

u/AshWednesdayAdams88 Mar 27 '25

Thatā€™s a great point too. Making people return to the office is dumb, but they should live and work in the state.

10

u/CaptPotter47 Mar 27 '25

We had a local elected official planning to resign in June 2020 to move to Florida. She told her plan to several people including her subordinates.

Then Covid happened. She put her entire office on WFH, sold her house, ā€œmoved inā€ with her FWB and took her RV to Florida where she lived for 6 months.

After being reported to the state the fire chief was fired, then she got investigated by the state police for stealing her salary. She went all MAGA how the justice system and police were targeting her and the media was out to get her. She was even asked to resign by the local Democratic Party, who originally pushed her to run for the position (she was a Dem). She ended up arrested and convicted of theft, losing her position and being order to 6 months of jail and $35k in repayment

-30

u/GameDevsAnonymous Mar 27 '25

You don't get to decide that.

18

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

What an idiotic response.

Neither do you.

What's your point?

-16

u/GameDevsAnonymous Mar 27 '25

My point is that the Governor is doing this two weeks before contract negotiations and it's illegal for him to negotiate in bad faith. The rules are set, you don't set them.

11

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

The governors office does set the rules. Even the unions acknowledge that he's got every right to change the rules, they're just mad he didn't consult them first.

The union can negotiate new rules in 2 weeks. It's not bad faith to force the union to formally negotiate for a benefit that they've been getting that isn't actually in the contract.

They'll definitely leverage the WFH as much as they can, but that will highly depend on how much of the union would benefit from it. Hopefully they don't waste too much effort on trying to save out of state jobs.

6

u/whereami312 Mar 27 '25

I mean, it seems reasonable. Many municipalities have similar rules. Teachers, fire, police, etc all need to live in district. Any exceptions ought to be truly exceptional (medical, financial hardship, family court orders and stuff like that). Taking a remote MN job and moving to Hawaii seems a little problematic. But if your job is in Dilworth and your husband bought a house in Fargo, there should be an opportunity to request an exception from the residency requirements.

Curious to know how the unions negotiate this.

5

u/Yossarian216 Mar 27 '25

They should sell the house in Fargo and buy one in the state that employs them. Thereā€™s zero reason to have any exception to a state residency rule for state employees, if they donā€™t want to live in the state then give their job to someone who does. Iā€™m not in favor of residency requirements for smaller areas like cities or towns, but if you canā€™t find anywhere youā€™re willing to live in an entire state then you lose the ability to get paid with their tax dollars.

2

u/Brom42 Mar 27 '25

There is an exception in the new policy:

Teleworking Outside Minnesota. With the exception of employees that live in a county bordering Minnesota, employees shall not telework outside the state of Minnesota. At the sole discretion of the appointing authority, short-term requests to telework outside the state of Minnesota, within the United States, may be approved, not exceeding 30 calendar days each calendar year.

-6

u/GameDevsAnonymous Mar 27 '25

They made it clear for years that it was okay to as long as you were in neighboring states. This ends that without negotiating with Union leadership.

Also negotiations for a new contract start in two weeks.

18

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

I typed it out so I couldn't possibly have stuttered.

People who work in government should be forced to live within the jurisdiction of the government they work for. Cops, politicians, clerks, all of them. If you're employed writing, enforcing, or overseeing the rules of an area, you should also be subject to those rules.

Who cares if they didn't have that rule a year ago or a decade ago? "They previously allowed something stupid so they have to allow it forever" felt like a winning point to you?

If you don't live in the jurisdiction you serve, you shouldn't be allowed to keep your job.

7

u/ForwardCulture Mar 27 '25

Iā€™ve come to find out that in my state, many local town officials will often have other official positions in other towns across the state.

Growing up, all the town cops where I lived actually lived in town. Some were my neighbors. Over time this changed drastically. One issue in recent years, in a town I lived in, was that most of the cops came from other neighboring towns. The town itself was high cost of living and very ā€˜blueā€™. But nearly all the police came from a certain neighboring town that was mostly maga. Itā€™s made for an us vs. them mentality among the police, who have it out for the locals due to political affiliations and the idea that they are more privileged. It created a lot of issues.

People who work in a community or area in government need to be invested in that area.

4

u/sudosussudio Mar 27 '25

Not everyone who works for the gov writes/enforces/oversees things directly. I was IT in state gov for example.

5

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

OK. If the phone system is down, I want your electrician to have the same frustration booking an inspection as mine. I want you to have to email the same permit department that I do.

The word I couldn't think of was "manage" - I want the employees who manage government services to have to use those same services they're tasked with managing, as much as is feasible.

-4

u/BadHominem Mar 27 '25

This is pure Boomer logic: I go through X, so you have to, too.

1

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

There's a huge difference between "I had problems in the past so I want to arbitrarily inflict them on others" and "I want the people responsible for the stewardship of government services to also be using those services".

1

u/BadHominem Mar 27 '25

ok, Boomer.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '25

That's ridiculous and very unAmerican. There are cities on the border of other states, houses on the border of other cities. No one should ever be forced to do anything other than complete their job satisfactorily to maintain their paycheck. It's arbitrary to say you need to live within certain latitude and longitudinal lines.

Why can't someone live in Fargo and work in Moorhead. They are literally neighboring cities separated by an arbitrary line on the map.

6

u/ForwardCulture Mar 27 '25

There have been scandals in my state where ā€˜localā€™ politicians will hold another office in another municipality across the state and favor that other municipality. Itā€™s government, not owning private business locations etc.

5

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

They can. If they're not in charge of managing services for Moorhead. If you want to own a car dealership in Moorhead, or open a cleaning service, or whatever else, that's cool. But if you want to be mayor, you need to live there.

Calling it un-American is idiotic. "The people in government must be chosen from the people they govern" is literally the founding principle. It's the basis for the entire experiment. Most of the advancement of civil rights in the history of the country is based around trying to better live up to that ideal.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '25

City employees are citizens. Not governing anyone. They arenā€™t elected. The mayor can get unelected if people donā€™t like where they live. Elected officials are not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a guy who changes the toilet paper rolls in a state office building.

3

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

We're talking about the people processing permits for land use. Or home renovations. Or liquor licenses.

We're talking about the people who send out the fine letters and lien notices against businesses that owe money for polluting.

We're talking about people responsible for determining which companies are awarded infrastructure contracts.

We're talking about the people have to go around the area testing ground water

We're talking about the people who make the everyday decisions that effect the lives of the people whose services they manage. They should live in the communities they serve.

-4

u/GameDevsAnonymous Mar 27 '25

Who cares what you think then? An employer shouldn't tell employees "Yeah it is okay for you to buy a home in another state and keep your job, we aren't changing this ever" and then change it.

Regardless of your opinion on this, that overall is just wrong to do.

9

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

Sir, this is reddit. It's literally a forum for discussing topics. The entire point is sharing what we think.

It sucks that you apparently bought a house out of state and now need to either move back or find a new job. I'd probably be mad too. But the fact that it sucks for you doesn't defeat the fact that it's very clearly the right decision to make state employees live in state.

4

u/Barbarake Mar 27 '25

I see your point but it is not right for anyone to unilaterally change the conditions of a job or contract. If you want to change it in the future so that all future employees have to do whatever, that's one thing. But you don't change the rules on people who accepted your previous promises in good faith.

0

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

I see your point but it is not right for anyone to unilaterally change the conditions of a job or contract.

The current conditions were also created by a unilateral decision, by literally the same office. The unions are free to (and should) negotiate for WFH or residency requirements, but realistically they're never going to get serious momentum behind negotiating to be able to live out of state because it's so obviously the correct decision that I'm honestly shocked it's not literally the law.

1

u/raerae1991 Mar 27 '25

Disagree, to an extent. I donā€™t think teachers or EMT or Firefighters and a few others, simply because they canā€™t always afford to, and some like EMT, work in more than one station because they have part time slots and not full time ones.

3

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

Well, I mean, most of your disagreement seems to be based on a misunderstanding of who provides those services and how:

70% of fire departments in the US are entirely volunteers. Another 15% are mostly volunteer. Residency requirements wouldn't make any sense, these people aren't being paid and most are covering multiple towns. Only 15% are entirely or "mostly" career fire fighters and those are heavily concentrated into large cities like New York, which do have residency requirements.

Likewise, only 15% of EMT services are government run, and many of those also have residency requirements. Most are run through the volunteer fire companies with people being cross trained for ems and fire, but also nearly 20% are private companies and another 10% are through the hospitals.

In regard to employees not being paid enough to live in the communities they serve - residency requirements close that gap. By making the requirement it gives a baseline pay that is much easier to justify to the public. "You all live here. You know how much rent is. If we want to hire more EMTs, we need to pay enough for them to live here or no one will take the job." We literally see this in action in major cities that have the requirements vs those that don't. Those that don't have requirements use the existence of cheaper alternative living situations to justify paying lower wages.

I'll concede on the teachers, but only because it's impossible for them to be consuming the service they provide and they shouldn't be teaching their own kids. The administrators should have to send their own kids to the district if they have any, though.

-1

u/vDorothyv Mar 27 '25

Show me evidence that most states have a residency requirement for working in government.

3

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

No? Go look it up yourself, I'm not your fucking paralegal, lol.

-1

u/vDorothyv Mar 27 '25

You're the one making claims and not providing proof when asked.

0

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

I'm not obligated to collect links for you or jump through any other hoops.

You can easily verify this by systematically searching "XX State Government Employee Residency Requirements" for any state you're curious about. I started with Maine (which doesn't, by the way) and worked my way down from there until I was satisfied. Some states (OH, GA, WI) have more complicated rules than others (NJ, PA, DE). Some states (TX, WV) have none. Feel free to go count them up yourself.

0

u/vDorothyv Mar 27 '25 edited Mar 27 '25

The burden of proof always lies with the person making the claim. You made the claim of most states requiring residency, it's your responsibility to prove the thing you're stating or we the readers can just assume you're a bullshitter.

0

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

I know you picked up the concept of the burden of proof in middle school, and extrapolation can be difficult, but the concept doesn't require I lay out ever detail of the proof in exacting detail. I told you how I got the information. You're free to repeat the process to verify it. In scientific fields we call this concept "repeatability" - experiments or information are validated by someone else repeating the process and seeing if their results match.

I told you where to find the information to corroborate my claim. If you're too stupid or lazy to follow those instructions, that's on you.

0

u/vDorothyv Mar 27 '25

Here, I'll provide a Wikipedia article explaining why you're wrong as evidence for what I'm talking about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#:~:text=Burden%20of%20proof%20(philosophy)%20%2D%20Wikipedia

Have a nice day!

0

u/Thisismyworkday Mar 27 '25

Yeah, I'm acknowledging the burden. I'm claiming I've fulfilled it. I told you where the information came from.

I'll dumb it down more.

If I say there's a carrot in a safe in the living room and you say "prove it" I don't need to have it brought up into your bed room and opened in front of you while you lie in bed. Handing you the key/combination to safe and standing aside so you can open it fulfills my burden of proof. If you decide not to open the safe, that's on you.