Re-entry into the building weekly Monday meeting notes

Attendees:

CFPB: Marty Michalosky (Director of Facilities), Dom Murgo and Lisa Belasco (Labor Relations)

NTEU: NTEU 335 Health and Safety Committee, Steve Keller and Matt Ross from NTEU National

CFPB Updates

Sit rep. Dashboard - DC and NYC remain in medium risk level

Updated Wiki with color coding.  Update with April 11th information Zixta sent out

Small Savers - one case last week.  Another child on Friday tested positive.  Toddler room close from now to May 3rd.  Haven’t alerted staff yet. They do not post the COVID cases in the offices to the wiki. They only email the employees who were signed up to be in the offices that week.

Q&A

NTEU: How do you plan to comply with Space MOU if you’re moving forward with a unilateral, forced Return to Office (RTO) without us reaching an agreement?

CFPB: We plan to be in compliance with the Space MOU after May 22nd. 

NTEU: How are you assigning seats? We agreed to suspend new seat assignments over a year ago. Are you still following that agreement?

CFPB: Yes, we did suspend assigning new seats. Since then we started working on seat assignments related to CFPB Next. Now going forward since we’ve now been put in a situation where leadership has made a decision to revert back to the CBA, we have been making new seat assignments for new hires, according to the Space MOU, for 1700 G St. We have seats for about 120 new hires, following the Space MOU. We still have some excess seats after that.

NTEU: Where will contractors, interns, supervisors and other NON-BUE be seated in HQ after May 23rd?

CFPB: Two answers to that question. One is: we’re not bringing back all contractors after May 21st at this point. We are maintaining all those on site who need to come on site like we have been during the pandemic. We don’t have a date to return contractors to the office at this point, it’s something we are still considering. We are going in and clearing out the 30-sq-ft workstations, so we’re prepared for seating them going forward. 2) For non-BUE and supervisors, if they were assigned a seat prior to the pandemic, they will keep that same seat. For new hires, we will still be seating them in the same manner as BUE, following the Space MOU.

NTEU: What about interns?

CFPB: We try to follow the Space MOU/seat assignment but sometimes we change to 30-square-foot workstations. Generally speaking we do try to assign them seats. I’m sure there are situations where they hotel.

NTEU: Is there an exception for interns in the Space MOU?

CFPB: No, not that I’m aware of.

NTEU: We’ve heard that interns will not be seated at all and will be permitted to work from home/remotely after May 22nd. Are you aware of that?

CFPB: I don’t know if that’s accurate. I have heard various times from various people that we don’t have enough seats, and we do have enough seats. If the numbers are correct that I’ve gotten from OHC then there are enough seats to seat new hires. 

NTEU: If you stopped assigning new seats because there were not enough seats last year, then how is it the case that there are now enough seats to seat over 100 new hires?

CFPB: That wasn’t the only reason we suspended new seat assignments but it’s my understanding there was a lot of offboarding and looking at the numbers, we have an available pool of seats to seat people. That information went up to leadership and they made the decision to seat those people so that’s what we’re doing.

NTEU: Clarify why you don’t use locality case rates?  For masking screening and testing we are using the location where we have facilities.  Left in MD, DC, and VA but they don’t drive decisions. 

NTEU- pointed out the Bureau has to comply with the entire Health & Safety article

CFPB- We believe we only have to apply ⅓ of the introductory provision in the health and safety article

CFPB- I don’t see how space is related to health and safety.

NTEU- They are directly related. Space and seat assignments are essential to the safety protocols for protecting employees from airborne transmission of COVID-19. A known hazard that the CBA Health and Safety Article requires you to protect us from.

NTEU- How are you assigning seats? How are you seating non-BU and contractors?

CFPB- We aren’t making contractors come back to offices after May 21st. Only the few essential contractors who have been required to come in to work in person throughout the pandemic will continue to be working in-person after that date.

NTEU: Update us on why you haven’t responded to our health and safety proposal last week. 

CFPB: We’re done with Health and Safety. We’ve already started implementing our plans.

NTEU: That's right, you unilaterally implemented multiple elements of your proposal while we were still exchanging counterproposals - before you even told us you were "done with health and safety" on Tuesday.

NTEU: Do you really believe you are following the Health and Safety Article and keeping the workplace “free of known hazards”?

CFPB: “I don’t know if we can get to a place where every place is 100% free, I don’t know if we can say there is zero risk”