Top U.S. health officials have urged Americans to limit close contact with others. Federal employees are anxious about returning to work.
Most of the nation’s 2.1 million federal employees will report to work Monday to tightly packed office cubicles and other workplaces where they serve the public, even as schools and colleges across the country have closed, businesses have sent their staffs home to work and governors have canceled public activities to limit the spread of theTop U.S.
“Asking employees to work like this has never been done before,” said Daniel Kaniewski, who until February was the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s second-ranking official. “Can you do the functions of government at home on this scope and for an extended duration?” More than 40 percent of the federal workforce was eligible for telework when President Trump took office in 2017. Then the Trump administration scaled back working from home as a regular practice at multiple large agencies, complicating a quick ramp-up now.
“This is of a shutdown magnitude, but it doesn’t have clear lines like a shutdown,” said Mark Greenblatt, the Interior Department inspector general, who last week told his 265 auditors and inspectors they could telework. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has not provided its staff with uniform guidance on telework, with each office adopting its own policies. Some employees say they want concrete instructions to work from home for a period of time, rather than just being told to be “telework ready.”
But it was unclear how that would be accomplished without large absences. A fraction of call-center employees are authorized to answer phones from home.
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