Many of the federal government’s health workers were left wondering who needed to report to the office. In the more than 80,000-person Department of Health and Human Services, Washington-based employees reported on Monday morning without any kind of uniform plan, unsure of how long they might be in the office or whether their colleagues had already decided to stay home.
In the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, which includes the surgeon general and a group of key health programs, some employees, faced with unclear directions, simply decided to stay home without waiting for an official directive.
The Social Security Administration has so far resisted allowing its employees to work from home, instead allowing only workers who have self-quarantined to do so, unnerving judges and employees across the country.
Attempts by the Association of Administrative Law Judges, a union that represents a majority of administrative law judges, to hold Social Security disability hearings via video conference and to screen claimants for possible symptoms have been rebuffed. Video conference or hearings by telephone, a Social Security Administration official replied, are “generally limited to incarceration, institutionalization,” and natural disasters.
“We have called for the pause button to be hit because of the failure of leadership,” Judge Melissa McIntosh, the president of the association, said in an interview on Monday. “The agency has not taken precautions to ensure the safety of its public servants.”
Judges, lawyers and prosecutors with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also pressed the office within the Justice Department responsible for adjudicating all immigration cases to suspend court. But so far, the office has only postponed detained docket cases.
In a letter on Sunday night, the Department of Agriculture told employees that it was “working to maximize the use of telework” but that offices “should remain open and operational for the delivery of services.”