City Workers Are Back in the Buildings

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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC in Gothamist's newsroom filling in for Brian today, who's off. For those of you who are observing Yom Kippur, we wish you an easy fast and a meaningful day. Coming up on today's show, we're going to hear from Christine Quinn, who now leads a nonprofit that runs shelters for homeless families on the unique challenges unhoused students face as they head back to school. Plus, we're going to dig into the fact versus fiction with regards to the drug Ivermectin, and at the end of today's show, we'll talk about why enforcement of a city law that aims to get reckless drivers off the road just isn't happening with absolutely tragic consequences but first, this has been a big week for New York City parents, teachers, and municipal workers.

Many of whom have been working remotely since the early days of the pandemic in March of 2020. That was a big adjustment. For many city agencies, remote work was an entirely new concept, just not something people did, of course, until it was something that so many of us suddenly started to do. Now, as the city attempts what Mayor de Blasio has called a restart, some of those same city workers were ordered to leave their homes on Monday and returned to their respective buildings across the city. We're talking about roughly 80,000 of the cities 300,000 workers, many of whom were on the front lines the whole time. In an appearance on this show last Friday, Brian asked the mayor why it was necessary for these workers to return now given the spread of the Delta variant and the uncertainty that's raised for many workers. Here's about 30 seconds of what he said.

Mayor de Blasio: We have not had a particularly stellar experience with remote employment. I've been very open about this. The different sectors have reported different things. From a government perspective, our folks not being in their offices, not being able to coordinate, and work together, learn together on how to address issues, create solutions together. It's made a huge impact, unfortunately, in the wrong direction. It's imperative to get our workforce back. Unlike private companies, our workforce serves the people and the people have a lot of needs right now.

Brigid Bergin: Those comments upset a lot of city workers, some of whom protested on Sunday. We don't know exactly how many people actually showed up on Monday or the rest of this week. The first attendance reports won't be available until Friday but the fight over how the city reopens and in this case, how city agencies resume pre-pandemic functioning doesn't appear to be done quite yet. Listeners, we want to put the call out to you early in this conversation. We're going to reserve most of the lines for city workers. Did you return to your office this week? What's it been like? Did you feel like you understood the health and safety protocols? Did you find that the way you work has changed so much you were actually less productive in the office than you were at home?

Or was it just really great to be somewhere with people all day? Was it a relief to finally returned to the office? Did you get lunch at your favorite local spot? Did you see someone in real life that you've Zoomed with for the past 18 months? Call us and tell us your experience. The number is 646-435-7280. That's 646-435-7280, and  

of course, we're putting the call out specifically to city workers, but before we get to those calls, I want to talk for a little bit about how we arrived at this moment with my first guest. Dana Rubinstein is a Metro reporter at the New York Times who covers politics and has been reporting on the return to work debate. Dana, welcome back to WNYC.

Dana Rubinstein: Hi Brigid. It's nice to be here.

Brigid Bergin: Let's talk for a moment about when and how workers learned that they would need to return to their offices. You reported a story earlier this month that many of the workers who I spoke with said was the first they learned about the return to work date. Can you talk about some of the emails you obtained and what that said about when workers needed to go back to the office?

Dana Rubinstein: Sure. Most of these workers learned that they would have to revert to a full-time five-day-a-week return to the office schedule less than two weeks before the date at which that was supposed to begin, which was Monday, September 13. That left a lot of folks scrambling to figure out how they would pick up their children from school. It was just a real scramble for a lot of folks, and also the news came to them with what seemed like very little warning.

Brigid Bergin: Dana. I said 80,000 city workers in that intro, but can you talk for a moment about the types of workers we're talking about here?

Dana Rubinstein: Yes, we're talking about folks who work in the department of city planning, who work in the department of environmental protection. A lot of them are people who they're public servants who have other career options but have nevertheless chosen to work for this city out of a desire to serve the public. One of the big question this whole thing raises is whether or not many of those people will seek out other jobs in the private sector where there's more flexibility as far as whether or not you have to go to the office.

Brigid Bergin: It was interesting to me that when your story popped, it was at the same time that much of the city was being hit with that devastating flooding from the remnants of Ida. Do you get the sense that the impact of the storm and some of the chaos that ensued really exacerbated people's return to work anxiety?

Dana Rubinstein: That's a really good question. I do know of one office location at the parks department in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that was actually badly damaged by the Ida flooding where it's not only do they have to return to the office full time, but they have to figure out how to do so in the context of an office that now needs a bunch of repairs. I also think Ida underscored how much people feel like they need flexibility and their work-life balance to deal with the many challenges that are constantly coming their way in this modern world that we live in.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. The mayor has been holding these near-daily briefings throughout the pandemic where he talks about the city's efforts to restart the economy and essentially get back to some semblance of normalcy and that clip we just played of him to some extent criticizing overall government performance when

people were working remotely is just some of the pushback we've heard, but he's made another argument framing this really as an issue of fairness. Can you speak to some of what he said more recently?

Dana Rubinstein: Sure. One of the arguments that he makes is that the bulk of the city's workforce not the 80,000, but the rest of the 300,000 and more city workers have been reporting to their jobs throughout the pandemic and that's because they have jobs that don't lend themselves to remote work. If you are an EMT or a doctor at one of the city hospitals that that's not a job that you can do remotely, and so he sees it as a question of fairness. Why should these 80,000 workers get something that is not available to the rest of the workforce? Those same workers, many of them will argue that just because the rest of the workforce can't work from home by virtue of the nature of their jobs, that doesn't mean that he should punish those who can.

Brigid Bergin: Some labor leaders have criticized the mayor's return to work mandate, specifically Henry Garrido, president of DC 37, the union that represents really the bulk of these 80,000 office workers who were ordered back. I should also note the union opposes the tester vax mandate for its workers, but on the return to work issue just yesterday the union filed a petition with the Office of Collective Bargaining to stop the return to work, and they site inspections at over 200 sites, which they say just don't currently meet health and safety requirements. What are the types of issues you're hearing from workers now that they are back in the office?

Dana Rubinstein: The types of issues we're hearing are not dissimilar from the ones that are cited in that petition to the Office of Collective Bargaining. There are workplaces that don't have modern HVAC ventilation systems. There are workplaces where people really feel like they're working cheek by jowl with colleagues who may or may not be vaccinated. The city workforce is spread out over just hundreds of different locations. The conditions at those locations vary tremendously. The other interesting thing to me anyway, is how the health concerns are intertwined with just this argument over the nature of work these days. People who study workplaces and how they function say that the pandemic has accelerated something that's already been happening for a while, which is just remote work. It's the way a lot of professionals believe that work can and should be done now. In some sense, de Blasio is trying to argue, turn back the clock.

Brigid Bergin: We'll talk more about that in this conversation, but I want to jump to the phones. We've got lots of city workers calling in. Thank you for taking some time to share your experiences with us. Let's go to Beth in Manhattan. Beth, welcome to NNYC.

Beth: Hello?

Brigid Bergin: Beth. How's your experience been? Tell us a little bit about what you do and what it's been like to be back at the office.

Beth: I work in IT for a city agency. For the last year and a half, we've been working beautifully and productively from home and we're supposed to return on Monday.

Ironically or sadly, I had a family emergency on the weekend, which it required me to stay home this week to monitor my family member. I could easily be working from home this week and keeping up with my projects, but I've been told under no uncertain terms, I am not allowed to work from home and to take vacation days. This is just unbelievable. Especially in the technology fields, there will be a mass Exodus of people because of these conditions.

Brigid Bergin: Beth, you raised an issue. That's really interesting because it's something that I know I was trying to get clarity on with city hall last week, if, for example, you need to quarantine or you have a family member who needs to quarantine, would you be able to work remotely? The late in the game clarification was that, yes, in fact, you could work. If it was possible to work remotely, you could work remotely if you were quarantining, but apparently that's not the case for your situation?

Beth: This was a medical emergency, heart-related family member. We're going to the cardiologist today and been monitoring my husband this week. It had nothing to do with COVID but things were stable here, I could be sitting here working right now.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. We wish you the best of luck when you go to the doctors. Dana, where you going to chime in on that?

Speaker 1: Yes. I feel like Beth raises an interesting point. I spoke to a Cornell labor professor who works with a bunch of Fortune 500 companies studying their remote work practices. He says, the research shows that when you let employees work remotely, they are either as productive or more productive on average than before. Beth's story supports that notion that she could be working from home right now and being a productive city employee but can't.

Brigid Bergin: Let's try another caller, Edgar in Queens. Edgar, welcome to WNYC.

Edgar: Hey, thanks for having me. Please ask me the question.

Brigid Bergin: What's your experience been this week?

Edgar: I've had to report into the office three days so far this week, and it's been very demoralizing because once again, the mayor keeps saying that safety protocols are being followed, but I worked in 335 Adams Street and it's a building not owned by the City. They leased some space on the floor that I'm in. No one ever checks my health screening. I've been going in a few days a week before, but there hasn't been a single time that anyone's checked my health screening, the health screening of any of my colleagues. I work in an open office and there are people adjacent to me that are actually making a joke out of this. They're like, "I'm going to just answer no one. Who's going to actually kick me out in terms of filling up the health screening."

The only other metric that we have, which are the ventilation reports, I had been trying to get some type of documentation or guides to help us understand the ventilation reports that they're offering us. No one's been able to provide me with that. Everyone wants to get on a call and explain things to me, but I think there's just a lot of lack of transparency around the one metric we have to make us feel safe.

Also there's zero enforcement of the health screening, where I work and where many of my colleagues work.

Brigid Bergin: Edgar. Do you feel like clearly you're sharing some of your concerns here with our listeners, but in a practical matter, do you feel how to escalate any of these concerns within your agency?

Edgar: They've given us an email address to share our concerns with. Honestly, I don't feel like we're being heard. There's a few times we've had town halls. It's been a very one directional conversation. It's been just that we're being talked at and not talk with or listened to. Quite frankly, I just do not feel very safe in the office space right now.

Brigid Bergin: Edgar, thank you so much for calling and sharing your story. I'm sorry for how you're feeling. As we've been talking to some city workers, we're going to take a moment and speak with Jennifer Gravel, Director of Housing and Economic Development for New York's Department of City Planning. She wrote an opinion piece for the New York times this week. The headline, "Bill de Blasio Is Forcing Me to Choose Between My Family and My Career." Jennifer, thanks for calling into the Brian Lehrer show.

Jennifer Gravel: Thank you, Brigid.

Brigid Bergin: Can you tell us a little bit about what working through the pandemic has been like for you? You wrote about juggling both your work with your own health issues, not just COVID and those of your family, and then ultimately finding some sense of balance with the ability to work remotely.

Jennifer Gravel: Sure. I was on medical leave when the pandemic hit. There was initially this sense of needing to focus on my own health but also really wanting to be part of what my colleagues were doing and really wanting to support them. When I came back about five months later, I was really impressed with how quickly the agency really got back to doing what they were doing and pivoted to support the recovery effort in any way they can. It was certainly an adjustment at first, but it was absolutely critical to be able to have a career and work for home like every parent who was trying to work and have kids remote schooling at the same time. It was a challenge, but there was a very tight network of other parents at city planning that supported one another. It was a challenge, but, I would say the ability to work remotely really allowed me to continue to have a career. I can't imagine continuing to work without that option or even going back after the pandemic.

Brigid Bergin: The Mayor has characterized the city government workforce as underperforming during the pandemic, but you write that for your agency it was really just the opposite.

Jennifer Gravel: I point out that the agency does a lot. It's not tracked by the metrics, but we do have the mayor's [unintelligible 00:17:49] there are sort of several critical indicators. Most of those critical indicators, even though the land use process was actually frozen by executive order. We managed to perform as well as

the previous fiscal year in this environment. There's a lot that we were doing that wasn't tracked. We were responding to City Hall requests for data at all hours. My team was working around the clock. We had a team in transportation that was working with the MTA and others in city government, try to understand where the greatest needs were to keep the transportation system running. We shared information on. We were analyzing employment data to try to understand where vulnerable and frontline workers lived.

There was a whole infrastructure of people working with information that were supporting this effort. None of this is tracked. We had a team of in-house team of about two dozen planners and project managers and communication specialists and software engineers and web designers that built New York City Engage. Which not only was awake for the land use process to continue to remote working environment, but has allowed all public meeting in the City of New York to continue in a remote environment.

This all happened remotely. I think has been so challenging is not only the abruptness of the return, but the sense that we aren't dedicated and that we haven't been working has been particularly difficult for morale. It's not just New York City issue. What's amazing is how it seems to have resonated with so many. I'm hearing from people across the country who are saying this idea that we need to get back to business as usual. We need to show that the city is open for business and that we can get through this. I think there's been a paradigm shift and it needs to be acknowledged.

Brigid Bergin: Have you been back in the office this week and, what have been some of the obstacles you've found if you've been there?

Jennifer Gravel: Sure. Yes. I've been back in the office. I've actually been coming in since September, not on a daily basis, but at least once a week because it is nice to. I still do value some boundaries between home and work. I like to be able to get out of the apartment once in a while. Initially there were tech troubles. Our IT division has been great getting us back online. We've had a lot of support from senior leadership in helping our people feel safe and advocating for our needs, but I think the big challenge in coming back this week, particularly I have two kids in public school.

There's no daycare, there's no afterschool really, actually they had a very little. It's just been a challenge to juggle this all at once and really on such short notice.

I think for me, I share a lot of the concerns that other city workers have about questioning whether it's safe and saying this is too abrupt but really it's more that we're going back to business as usual is this dread I have of trying to make this work. I feel like it's has been taboo for ages for people to say that it's too much. I think I said that and it seems to have resonated. I've had this book on my bookshelf for two years that I haven't had the courage to read, it's called Quitting by Peg Streep and that's because I was afraid that reading would keep me up ruminating all night about like, am I giving up? I love my job. Am I giving this up? Is this a mistake? Is it too much to do it. I felt like, yes.

Brigid Bergin: I think you framed this issue in really stark terms. As you're talking about whether it's reading this book, this idea of potentially leaving a position that presumably you do out of your commitment to public service seems to be something that you're really thinking about.

Just in our last question for the moment, I'm wondering if you could just talk about what is the impact to the city government institution. If people like you who have the institutional knowledge are contemplating leaving their positions, what does that mean for the city if people make the decision to leave?

Jennifer Gravel: I think it's a serious risk that needs to be taken seriously. Really not just for this administration, but for the next mayor. It's not just people like me, who've been here a long time, but other workers who really can work in what is an information economy and becoming an information economy. We have a team, just give an example, we have an entire team of GIS analysts that makes sure that the city's address files are accurate so that when someone calls an ambulance, that ambulance can show up at the right place.

If we lose those kinds of workers because they can make more and have a better work-life balance in the private sector, it's going to be harder to be innovative. It's going to be harder to be responsive. It's going to be harder to have good government if we can't have those kinds of people. Then there's people like me who've been here a long time that can manage the teams. They're going to have to hire these people that know how to implement these plans and strategies, who know what to do when the next administration wants to advance their agenda and how do they do that in a way that that's effective. It's really not just about long-term management, but also new talent and people with new ideas and people who have been at all levels of government who really understand how it works.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you so much. Jennifer Gravel is Director of Housing and Economic Development for New York City's Department of City Planning. We really appreciate you calling in and sharing your perspective as one of the city workers. Dana, I want to shift back to you. We got a tweet that says, "The city workers," this is Brian on Twitter who writes, "City workers returned to office is driven by real estate interests who lease office space to the city and to the businesses in the area. The city is also facing a loss of revenue from this." I'm wondering to what extent-- is that your analysis that this is a decision that's motivated maybe less by performance issues and more by ensuring that the city doesn't lose more revenue.

Dana Rubinstein: I think those are real concerns. The real estate taxes that emanate from the central business district are substantial in this. The city is anticipating a significant loss of real estate revenue in the coming years. To the extent that you can bolster the central business district and its office sector that redounds to the city's benefit. I do think economic revitalization is a very significant concern for the mayor. He thinks that perhaps where the city goes as far as return to office, others will follow. Certainly his mood has substantial support in the real estate and business communities. Yes, I think those concerns are real.

Brigid Bergin: What about the politics of this decision? There of course are the recent rumblings of a gubernatorial bid for Mayor de Blasio. Workers I spoke with said pretty bluntly that they think this mandate was really about currying favor with the business community, who he might need as donors for a statewide campaign. What are you hearing on this?

Dana Rubinstein: That's an interesting theory. I hadn't heard that particular iteration of it. That's impossible to say. I also think many consider the mayors gubernatorial aspirations to be a long shot and certainly the business community does seem to be coalescing behind Kathy Hochul and would presumably also be open to a run by Tish James if she decides to jump in. I don't know how real any of that is. I do think the mayor is very concerned about his legacy and leaving behind a New York City economy that is in a somewhat stable place. I think he sees this return to office and the reopening of schools and all of that as a way to move the ball. I think that people on the opposite side of the argument would argue that that he's in doing so denying a fundamental shift that has occurred in the ways in which white collar professionals work and he theoretically risks a brain drain.

Brigid Bergin: We have time to take a couple more callers. Let's go to Jenna in Queens. Jenna, thank you for your patience. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Jenna: Hi, thanks for inviting me on.

Brigid Bergin: Go ahead. Tell us what it's like returning to the office. What do you do and how's it been?

Jenna: Sure. I work for the City's Housing Department. I'm a mother of two, and I found working from home really challenging. I'm part of a team and we manage a number of staff and I think everybody did great--

Brigid Bergin: Oh, Jenna are you there?

Jenna: Can you hear me?

Brigid Bergin: Yes, go ahead.

Jenna: I agree with the other folks who called in to say that everyone has been doing great work from home. We actually had some issues with that where staff were working extremely long hours and working around the clock and because we weren't in the office with them, we couldn't see what was happening. I definitely take issue with what the mayor is saying that city workers weren't performing, but I still think that for a huge bureaucracy like this, it is really critical to be in the same place at the same time, especially for new staff, they need Face Time with their supervisors. They need to meet their their colleagues.

They need to be brought into meetings and they they need the ability to have informal conversations and the interstitial conversations we have before and after meetings walking to and from meetings or before and after phone calls, so much of that stuff was lost during COVID. While we all kept going and everybody did amazing work, I think that there's a disintegration that happens.

We lost a lot of staff during COVID, staff who were doing great work. I think the real issue for city workers at least in this field where we can leave and go to the private sector and make a lot more money is as compensation and maybe a flexible work schedule as part of that but I think that it is very important. There is something to what the mayor was saying about people being in the same space and being able to have conversations and come up with ideas. That was something that I really missed.

Brigid Bergin: Jenna, thank you so much for that perspective. It's important I think to hear that there are workers who really do feel like being back in the office together is an important part. I think that probably is true, not just among city workers but among many of the people who have been working remotely during the pandemic. We have one last caller, Michelle in Brooklyn. Michelle, we just have a little bit of time, but tell us what the experience has been like for you as a city worker returning to the office.

Michelle: Hi. From what I've heard from my colleagues-- I work at the health department and I've heard, it's been very, a lot of us have frankly, a lot of people have resigned, a lot of us had thought reasonable accommodations to work from home for various health conditions. The office is a bit of a ghost town. It's also just the fact that our lives are at risk just by being there and being in such close proximity to each other. All the collegiality that we miss from working in person with each other is just gone. Being forced to work in person at this time when there's the Delta variant, knowing how easy it is to catch the Delta variant, spread the Delta variant, regardless even if you are vaccinated, people are scared to be at work and it is not pleasant to be there. We were all very productive and happy working from home. The office should be available to those of us who do prefer working in the office, which some people do. For those of us who would rather work from home and feel safer working from home, we should be allowed to do it because we've been doing not only well, some of us, our performance has never been better working from home. There shouldn't be a one size fits all approach to the workplace.

Brigid Bergin: Michelle, thank you so much and the point you raised is one that Dana, I know you have acknowledged, and I want to frame my final question to you like this. Much of what Mayor de Blasio has been doing to get people vaccinated and reopen schools and business feels like it's been characterized as getting back to something returning to the way things were but we're about to see a new administration take over City Hall. I'm wondering if in the reporting you've done or in the conversations you have, you get any sense if a potential new administration likely an Adams administration is approaching public sector work differently, do you get the sense that we're still going to be in a returning to mindset or are there conversations happening about learning the lessons from the pandemic to try and retain and attract the best talent to city government?

Dana Rubinstein: That's an interesting question. Adams, Eric Adams has said a couple of things. He has expressed openness to looking into the possibility and the efficacy of remote work. I don't think he's gone beyond that though. I might be mistaken, but he is also has nurtured strong ties to a business community that wants  

its office buildings to be full. I don't think we have any real clarity yet on that issue, to be honest.

Brigid Bergin: Okay, well, we're going to have to leave it there. I've been speaking with Dana Rubinstein, a Metro reporter for the New York Times. Dana, thanks so much for joining us.

Dana Rubinstein: Thanks for having me, Brigid.

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