U.S. starts phased return of 2M federal employees
WASHINGTON» Returning Internal Revenue Service workers in Kansas City, Mo., 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 location-based plan for returning more of the 2 million federal workers to job sites.
The administration says the broad discretion in its coronavirus guidelines will allow agency leaders 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.
“Trump just wants to bring people back, because he wants to reset the economy. The one workforce he has control over is the federal workforce,” said Nicole Cantello, a staffer in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chicago region, and a local president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers.
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.
After the IRS initially told workers volunteering to return to bring — or make — their own masks, Democratic lawmakers have asked for more detail on how and when the administration planned to bring federal workers back. Some 11,000 IRS workers were given pay bumps of 10% to 25% to return to about 20 offices around the country, said Chad Hooper, president of the Professional Managers Association, a national group representing federal management-level employees.
Other workers in services dealing directly with the public — including park rangers and Veteran Affairs workers — will be priorities for the administration to bring back, the guidelines say.
On Saturday, Great Smoky Mountains National Park — the nation’s most visited — was partially reopened, making the southeast U.S. park one of the most prominent returns of federal facilities so far.