WASHINGTON: At Nasa headquarters in Washington, just a mile from the US Capitol, employees returned to an infestation of cockroaches and some are working in chairs with no desks, according to two people familiar with conditions there. In a private chat, staffers at US Citizenship and Immigration Services likened the hunt for desks in some regional offices to ” Hunger Games”, the popular series of novels and films where young people must fight to death in a govt-sanctioned contest.
And at an Internal Revenue Service office in Memphis, Tennessee, tax assessors sharing a training room are unable to discuss sensitive tax matters with clients over the phone out of fear of breaching privacy laws, according to one IRS manager. Hundreds of thousands of US federal govt employees, many of whom have been working from home since the Covid-19 pandemic, were ordered back to their offices full-time by President Donald Trump on Jan 20.
But many have arrived at workplaces unprepared for their return, according to 10 federal workers who spoke to Reuters. The federal employees work inside eight different govt agencies across the US who have returned to their office buildings, sometimes after years of working remotely. All spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Some critics of the move – including governance experts, federal union representatives and civil servants – have said the lack of preparation is no accident. They see it as a deliberate effort to make offices so unpleasant to work in that it will force more govt employees to resign. Trump wants to slash and reshape the 2.3-million strong federal civilian workforce.
Experts and labour unions say Trump’s return to office order is also emblematic of a wider problem with the way in which the US president and his top adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, are approaching the govt overhaul. “It’s the move fast and break things approach, without really thinking through the implications,” said Pam Herd, a social policy professor.
The pain of the return-to-office order is being felt among federal workers across the country. Federal employees described fights for desks and chairs, internet outages, a lack of parking spaces, with some sitting on floors and others told to use their personal smartphone hotspots to gain computer access to govt data. A manager at the IRS’ Washington headquarters told colleagues on a conference call on Tuesday she was sitting on a floor with her computer on her lap because she didn’t have a desk. An IRS human resources official in California was told to work in a supply closet. Immigration staff at the USCIS regional office in Chicago were temporarily forced to work on boxes in a storage room that served as a temporary office, one staffer said. “Employees whose salaries are paid for by taxpayers should show up to work,” DHS spokesperson said. “This isn’t complicated and isn’t controversial.”
(This is a Reuters story)
