Federal government?s coronavirus struggle: When and how to bring employees back to the office

They are still inspecting meat, working airport security X-ray machines, guarding federal prisoners, tending to sick veterans and serving the public directly in other ways — some with testing requirements, some not — while decisions about protecting their colleagues and the public drag on in agency-by-agency negotiations.Officials say they’re still contemplating how they’ll deal with unvaccinated employees while keeping vaccinated colleagues and the public safe — whether by reshuffling jobs, sending unprotected staff home to work or reconfiguring offices to keep them at a distance.Even a coronavirus testing program for those employees exempted from the president’s vaccine mandate won’t begin for another month, after a similar testing effort last summer failed to get off the ground.“We’re at a point in the pandemic when all the processes are out the window,” said Chad Hooper, executive director of the nonprofit Professional Managers Association, which represents managers at the Internal Revenue Service, whose leaders recently warned the public to expect subpar service this tax season. The administrative law judges who hear appeals of denied claims for disability benefits — and are now conducting hearings on the phone or through videoconferencing — will resume in-person work in May and June, the agency said last week.Other agencies are still negotiating over their returns, with the biggest hurdle finding agreement with unions, which must get 30 days’ notice before employees return and have generally pushed for more time working from home.“The Federal Government’s implementation of vaccination requirements for Federal employees has been an unequivocal success that has increased vaccination, saved lives, protected our workforce, and strengthened our ability to serve the American people,” Isabel Aldunate, spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, which is overseeing federal coronavirus policy, said in an email. Just 10 percent of agency employees work in the Washington area.“Much of our workforce lives in rural areas, so the vaccine hesitancy that has been documented in rural America very much applies to our employees,” said a USDA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.Some waiver requests have been approved, said the official, who did not offer details or say how the agency plans to deal with them.The prospect of working side by side with unvaccinated colleagues is unsettling to many staffs that are already doing it.“Everybody is masked, but there is no way to stand six feet apart in a processing plant,” said Paula Schelling-Soldner, chairwoman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, which represents about 6,400 meat and poultry inspectors, a group that has worked through the pandemic. The local represents the staff of the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, which has faced hundreds of absences because of omicron in recent weeks.The Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, which includes officials from the Office of Personnel Management, the White House and other departments, has urged agencies to start testing unvaccinated employees at least weekly by Feb. 15, either in the office, at outside locations or through self-administered tests that are verified.Standing up such a system and potentially signing new contracts with outside providers poses a big challenge; a similar request to set up a testing system failed last summer.