For the past year, New York City has been in the shadow of a deadly pandemic, with many city and private sector employees forced to work from home, depriving New York of its life force and devastating its economy.
But with virus cases appearing to stabilize and vaccinations becoming more widespread, city officials intend to send a message that New York is close to returning to normal: on May 3, the city will force your city officials are expected to begin reporting to work in person, according to internal planning documents shared with The New York Times. The workers will return in stages over several weeks.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to bring the country’s largest municipal workforce back to the office signals a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of a city that served as the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, symbolizing the dangers of living in global capitals densely populated.
The aim of the move is to convey that New York City will soon be open for business and to encourage private companies to do the same – raising the hopes of owners whose skyscrapers are practically empty while office workers stayed at home.
The new policy, which was confirmed by an adviser to Mr. de Blasio, is expected to affect some 80,000 employees who have worked remotely, including social workers, computer experts and administrative associates. The rest of the workforce of some 300,000 people in the city, many of them in uniforms, including police, fire and sanitation workers, have already attended workplaces.
The Partnership for New York City, a business group, said recently that it expects nearly half of Manhattan’s one million office workers to return to the office by September, although “most continue to work remotely, at least part-time.” At the beginning of March, only 10% of these workers were back in the office.
“Most of all, this is a great driver of momentum,” said Reggie Thomas, a senior vice president at the New York Board of Real Estate.
Even so, the move to the city has raised concerns among some workers and union leaders, who fear that the return to office will be premature. New York City still has one of the highest coronavirus case rates in the country. Many workers will have to travel an hour or more on public transport.
Face masks will be strongly encouraged, but not required: a March 18 presentation by the city’s Department of Administrative Services, said that agency leaders should “encourage the use of facial coverings at all times, even if the distance from 1, 80 m can be maintained ”. The clause allows city workers to remove facial covers if they are more than two meters away, according to an agency official informed about the rules.
Vaccination will not be mandatory for those returning to office for legal reasons, according to a spokesman for the City Hall. City officials are strongly encouraging their employees to get vaccinated and are trying to facilitate this process. Still, a survey of the city’s workforce in January suggested that vaccine hesitation varied significantly by agency, and the city was unable to provide an estimate of how many city officials had already received the vaccines.
Henry Garrido, executive director of the city’s largest municipal workers’ union, the District Council 37, expressed particular concern with its members who work in densely packed call centers, as well as in social services offices, where interactions with unmasked customers can be common. All city workers who deal directly with the public are currently eligible for vaccination, regardless of age.
About 200 members of DC 37 died of coronavirus, a result of what Garrido described as “nebulous and unclear” public health guidelines at the beginning of the pandemic, lack of protective equipment and inconsistent municipal and state policies.
“We don’t want to repeat these mistakes,” said Garrido. “I want to make sure that these offices are absolutely ready for the workers to return.”
He said the union believes that at least 20 percent of its 100,000 municipal workers have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
The return to the municipal offices will come with a series of security requirements. The total number of occupants of a space cannot exceed 50 percent of the maximum space occupation limit, as defined by the building code, according to presentations reviewed by The Times.
Ventilation systems should be adjusted to maximize air flow. Six-foot markers must be placed on all entrances and elevators. Agencies will have to incorporate unidirectional traffic flow into their offices whenever possible. There will be limits to the lift’s occupancy and offices will have to adhere to strict cleaning standards.
The task is likely to be a heavier survey for agencies that have offices across the city and serve clients, compared to those that are concentrated in an office building.
Real estate and business leaders for months have argued that returning to the office is the key to the city’s economic recovery. Many of the city’s most affected small businesses are in the commercial center of Manhattan, and New York City’s budget depends heavily on property taxes.
Health experts are less sure that now is the time. “It may certainly be that May is a good time to think about starting to bring people back,” but thanks to the coronavirus variants, there is no guarantee, said Dr. Ronald Scott Braithwaite, professor of medicine and population health at NYU Grossman Medical school. “It is a difficult decision.”
Dr. Braithwaite noted that the cases were not “on a sharp decline in New York”, suggesting that the plateau in the numbers of cases is a function of the tension between the new variants of the disease circulating in the city and the growing number of new patients. Yorkers who were vaccinated or acquired antibodies after infection.
A spokesman for the mayor said that if the cases increase again, the return will be postponed.