White House Urges Telework for Washington’s Federal Workers

(Bloomberg) -- The White House is asking all federal agencies to offer “maximum telework flexibilities” to their employees in the Washington area, citing concerns about the coronavirus.

“The administration wants to ensure that department and agency leaders assertively safeguard the health and safety of their workforce while remaining open to serve the American people and conduct mission critical functions,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a memo to department heads and agencies Sunday night.

While the memo stops short of ordering federal employees in the Washington, D.C., metro area. The memo didn’t specify how many employees would be affected, but the January economic indicators report of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer for the District of Columbia estimates there are 363,700 federal workers in the area.

“We encourage agencies to use all existing authorities to offer telework to additional employees, to the extent their work could be telework enabled,” according to the memo, which was signed by Russell T. Vought, the Office of Management and Budget’s acting director.

Following the release of that memo, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Education Department sent memos to employees authorizing agency-wide telework.

But the nation’s largest union of federal workers said the White House hadn’t gone far enough to protect federal workers and the public.

“OMB’s guidance fails to address the 85% of federal workers who live and work outside the nation’s capital,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “The administration needs to take more direct action to protect federal employees and the public they serve by immediately ordering all federal employees nationwide to telework if the work they do can be accomplished at home.”

The White House’s guidance to agencies comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier recommended that events of 50 people be postponed or canceled nationwide, its most extreme effort yet to slow the march of coronavirus in the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Natter in Washington at anatter5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Larry Liebert

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