At FIU, and across Florida, workers have a right to fear going back to the office amid COVID | Editorial

When Florida International University announced this month that more employees would be returning to work on campus, President Mark Rosenberg framed it as a rallying cry to “take back our university” and “liberate us” from the grip of the COVID pandemic.

FIU, which shut down quickly last spring and then partially reopened in the fall, has gone to great lengths to prevent transmission: installing plexiglass barriers, improving air filtration, contact tracing, training COVID-sniffing dogs and creating an app to help students and employees decide if they should stay home. All of that is in addition to the regular requirements of masks and sanitizing. There are real examples there for the rest of the community.

Almost a year after the school shut down, Rosenberg wanted faculty and staff to start “repopulating” the campus starting Feb. 15, with another ramp-up beginning March 1.

It’s understandable. Heading into Year Two of the coronavirus pandemic, we are all — public institutions, private businesses and citizens — bone-weary and impatient to see signs of normalcy. Companies and organizations have adjusted over and over as they try to balance business goals with the health of their workers.

Much uncertainty

But COVID isn’t gone, and no declarations will make it so. At FIU — and, no doubt, many organizations — not everyone shares in the enthusiasm for a return to in-person work. While students and most faculty members are largely unaffected by the new policy, other workers have been told to go back to in-person work at least three days a week in rotations — five if they have their own offices — as long as they can maintain a six-foot distance from others. If they have a specific reason to continue remote work, they have to try to work it out with their supervisor.

A lot of workers are feeling jittery. That’s understandable, too. One employee, who spoke to the Miami Herald but asked to remain anonymous, called the decision “rushed,” noted that no reason was given for the timing and worried that others in the workplace wouldn’t follow masking and hand-washing requirements. That’s a valid concern. No one wants to be forced into being the COVID police in their own work space.

FIU’s determination to bring workers back to campus means some will face a painful choice: go to the office and increase their potential exposure to COVID-19 or give their bosses a specific reason to keep working from home. For those depending on that paycheck, the pressure to go along will be strong.

If remote-work productivity is not the issue — and no one has said that it is at FIU — why not allow the workers a greater say in the amount of risk they are willing to shoulder? At this point in the pandemic, with almost 30,000 people dead in Florida, that seems only humane. And if coronavirus numbers continue to decrease and vaccines become more available, fears will diminish, perhaps soon.

FIU’s struggle is being played out across the state and country, in restaurants, Fortune 500 companies and public institutions. A year in, we are still figuring out how to strike the balance between caution and crippling. What is the most responsible strategy when, like FIU, you employ thousands of people, but still need to keep the doors open?

There’s also a commonsense business part of the equation to consider. Part of being safe is feeling safe. If workers are worried about their safety, they’ll have a hard time doing a good job.

Variant arrives

These are hopeful times when it comes to the pandemic. Vaccines are actually getting into the arms of seniors and health workers. There are indications that the pool of people eligible for the shots will expand soon.

Serious worries remain, though. Transmission rates may be down in Florida and in Miami-Dade County — but they’re still not at the point where epidemiologists say the threat is low. Infections and hospitalizations because of COVID also are dropping in Florida, after a January peak, but the state now has become the national leader in cases of the more-transmissible U.K. variant. Miami-Dade lags behind other large counties in getting seniors vaccinated. There’s still no certainty that the end of this pandemic is in sight.

Public and private organizations have been forced to take extraordinary measures just to stay operational.

Rosenberg told the Herald in an emailed statement last week that, “We have good science about how COVID-19 can be prevented, and at FIU we have taken every step and precaution to make sure that [the] university offers a healthy environment.”

That’s encouraging. But if there’s one thing this terrible year has taught us, it’s that the pandemic doesn’t operate according to plans. As the nation hopes for a somewhat normal summer, people still will be weighing how much risk they find acceptable. Putting control in the hands of employees, rather than pressuring them to return to in-person work if they’re not ready, seems like the right balance to strike. FIU and other organizations that are urging employees back to work need to be sure a semblance of normalcy doesn’t come at the expense of their health or peace of mind.