It saves people so much money from gas, parking and vehicle upkeep to clothing to food and this is not to mention how much time people save by not having to commute. For me, my commute was an hour plus with traffic, but it would also take me another hour or so so get “office ready”. Now I can sleep in until 7:30am and start working at 8am instead of getting up at 5:30am to make sure I’m in the office by 8. The extra time is invaluable.

We haven’t gotten rid of any of our office space yet. They were starting to talk about downsizing our space right before the election, but since then we haven‘t heard anything else about it. I’d feel a lot better (as I’m sure others would too) if they started getting rid of more office space.

Yea, you’re not wrong about any of this.

I’ve been trying to be the voice of reason in my office about the rumors, but it does get exhausting.

I heard that the union wasn’t too keen on putting telework into the contract and are actually discussing calling union staff back into the office in August.

I am in this same boat. I’m not covered by the Union contract, but usually management level staff end up following whatever is in the union contract. I have had two staff members say they will quit if we have to go back into the office and another that said they are likely to retire early even if it means taking a hit to their pension. Our office has been very bit as productive from home as they were in the office. I’d actually argue they are more productive because they are spending more of their day working and less time with the “water cooler” office talk and all the other distractions that come with the office environment. Morale is low already, as you said, and if we get called back in for essentially no good reason, people are never going to put in the same amount of effort into their daily work they are now.

This is the exact type of answer I was looking for. Thanks so much!

The senior level management in my department were under the same telework agreement as the rest of us.

I’m a state employee with a full time telework agreement. The management directive about telework however does not guarantee we will get to keep that agreement and given what happened with senior level management staff, the rest of us are feeling like they could make us come back into the office at any time. The fact that no one is saying anything either way doesn’t give anyone any comfort. I was hoping other state employees might have heard something that I haven’t.

Not all state employees.