Rangers, IRS volunteers lead return of fed workers

Returning Internal Revenue Service workers in Kansas City are being directed to a room well-stocked with face masks, while some other IRS offices were still telling staffers to buy or make their own as the Trump administration starts rolling out a locationbased plan for returning more of the some 2 million federal workers to job sites.

The administration says the broad discretion in its coronavirus guidelines will allow agency heads to get federal workers back first in areas where rates of cases are lower and where protective measures and health care are robust. Officials for unions representing the federal government’s civilian workforce are expressing cautious approval at some of the spot-by-spot plans being drawn up, but they still fear workers will be ordered back and risk infection as President Donald Trump tries to push the U.S. economy back up on its feet.

So far, it’s only a partial return bringing back comparatively few of the federal employees sent home for safety amid the outbreak. But with the U.S. still among the hardest hit in an outbreak that has killed 275,000 people around the world, some federal workers fear they’ll be political pawns.

Guidelines late last month from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the federal Office of Personnel Management call for phased returns based partly on local conditions, such as whether there have been 14 straight days of declining cases of coronavirus and flu. But the federal guidelines largely shy away from mandates, such as any directives to make protective gear available to all federal workers.