Houston employers rethinking return risk
Local business group urges working from home if possible
Houston employers are reversing course as COVID-19 cases spike in the region, wary of infecting employees or customers as Texas officials push ahead to reopen the economy.
Local restaurants, tech companies and energy corporations are not waiting for government to act. They are scaling back plans to reopen, sending or keeping workers at home, and, in some cases, shutting down again. Meanwhile, Houston’s biggest and most influential business group called on employers to send workers home if they can work remotely.
The Greater Houston Partnership, which has 1,110 members employing about one-fifth of the region’s workforce, said local COVID-19 cases are reaching a critical point and employers need to help curb what the group’s CEO called an “alarming trajectory.”
“We encourage employers to strongly consider returning to a work-from-home model,” Bob Harvey said in a statement. “To keep our Houston economy moving forward, we must all do our part.”
Texas reported nearly 6,000 new cases Wednesday, the highest increase in a single day. Cases are spiking particularly in the Houston region, where 497 people
have died from COVID-19. Local authorities reported 1,831 new cases on Wednesday, bringing the regional total to more than 35,000, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of local health data.
Businesses backtrack
Business owners are becoming wary of staying open as the virus flares in Houston.
Kolache Factory, a popular Texas pastry restaurant chain, said Wednesday that it closed dining rooms at 26 corporate locations in Texas, Kansas and Indiana less than two weeks after reopening them. The restaurant returned to carryout, curbside or drive-thru services only.
Dawn Nielsen, the chief operating officer, said employees recently began to test positive for COVID-19 for the first time since the coronavirus was discovered in the region.
“It’s really hitting home,” Nielsen said. “You really start to get nervous about if you’re putting your employees at risk. Yesterday, when we had another person test positive, I was like, ‘That’s it. I’m done. I’m going to pull back.’ ”
Other Houston restaurants have made similar calls to rethink reopenings. At Tacos a Go Go, a popular Houston taco chain, the date to reopen its location in the downtown tunnels of One Shell Plaza, which caters to the corporate lunch crowd, has now been pushed back twice.
Co-owner Sharon Haynes had hoped to reopen that location after the Fourth of July. But, she said, “with the way the (coronavirus) numbers are going, I can’t imagine offices will be eager to return.”
Haynes said the possibility of reclosing indoor dining rooms at the chain’s three open locations is “up for discussion” every day. She also praised Harris County for recently ordering businesses to require people entering to wear masks.
“We’re not happy that our employees are responsible for enforcing it, but it keeps people safe,” Haynes said. “It’s good that it doesn’t come from us, so we don’t have to play political football.”
Other businesses have also reversed course. Apple is temporarily closing all its Houston-area retail stores, citing the surging number of COVID-19 cases in the region.
The company had reopened its Texas stores in late May after closing them for several months at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Apple said at the time that if conditions deteriorated some stores could be shuttered again.
Return to work delayed
With Houston increasingly looking like a new epicenter of coronavirus cases, local officials have encouraged residents to practice social distancing. On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott asked Texans to voluntarily stay home if possible.
Corporations, noting the surge in cases, have delayed return-towork dates.
Houston-based Calpine, the nation’s biggest natural gas generator of electricity, planned to have employees return to the office in early July. Given the recent rise in positive cases, Calpine has postponed the return, said company spokesperson Brett Kerr.
Houston oil field services giant Halliburton, too, is pushing back its return-to-work plans. A spokesperson said that due to the upward trend in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the company will add two weeks to its phase one back-to-work plan, which limits office occupancy to no more than 30 percent of the company’s workforce.
Still staying home
Some businesses have hesitated to participate in the reopening at all, even though local shutdown orders were lifted in May.
NRG Energy, one of the biggest power sellers in Texas, has kept 95 percent of its employees working from home. NRG does not anticipate beginning its phased return to the office until September, a spokesperson said.
Similarly, Community Health Choice, a local nonprofit insurer in Texas, also has kept 95 percent of its employees home. There are no plans to bring them back to the office.
“We are doubling down on proactive phone, text, email and online communications,” spokesperson Robin Paoli said in a statement.
At the San Jose Clinic in Midtown, plans to reopen the pharmacy for in-person visits are postponed until the pandemic subsides — and it might be a while.
“We are still battling with the looming presence of this virus,” said Kimberlyn Clarkson, chief advancement officer for the San Jose Clinic.