SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A union representative who works at CalPERS is leading one of the most visible fights in California state government against strict in-office requirements amid a new COVID-19 surge.
Hoang-Van Nguyen, a district labor council president with SEIU Local 1000, addressed the retirement system’s Board of Administration at an open meeting last week, demanding more flexibility to work remotely amid virus outbreaks.
“Infection rates keep rising,” Nguyen told the board.
Nguyen recently delivered to CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost and Board President Theresa Taylor a petition with more than 500 signatures and three demands: a return to full-time telework until infections drop; a uniform policy for all the department’s divisions, and more detailed communications to the union regarding infections.
CalPERS requires most workers — with the exception of call center employees — to work from the office three days a week under a policy implemented in March. Department representatives have cited the need to make sure employees were assigned and performed full-time work.
The department is broken up into 32 divisions in three buildings on Q Street in Sacramento. CalPERS manages retirement benefits for about 2 million people and health insurance for about 1.5 million. It oversees an investment fund recently valued at $433 billion.
Seven of the divisions are in “outbreak” status under Cal/OSHA rules, spokesman Brad Pacheco said in an email, meaning they’ve had three infections in the last two weeks.
Since April 1, 69 of the department’s roughly 2,800 employees have contracted cases that CalPERS has confirmed originated at work, Pacheco said. For the same time period, the department is aware of 195 infections in total among employees, he said.
Sacramento County’s infection rate stood most recently at 37.7 cases per 100,000 people, just below last summer’s second-wave peak in the upper 40s per 100,000. Last summer, as the vaccine was rolled out, CalPERS and most other California state offices were allowing employees to work remotely every day.
But departments’ approaches have diverged since then, with some continuing to allow full-time remote work and others requiring office appearances one to three days per week.
The surge has forced departments to re-evaluate. Some departments, including the 5,600-employee Franchise Tax Board, have softened in-office requirements. The FTB is down from two days a week to one and managers have discretion to expand telework through Sept. 2. SEIU Local 1000 also organized a petition there.
At CalPERS, employees who work in an area where there’s an outbreak may telework for up to 14 days “where operationally feasible,” Pacheco said.
When telework is not an option, employees are advised — but not required — to wear masks, he said.
Nguyen said the variability among divisions increases the risk of exposure.
The risks are serious, she said, citing a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finding that about one in five people who had COVID-19 have lingering symptoms, known as long covid.
“If we continue on this path and it affects operational issues, we want the public to know what management has done here,” she said.
CalPERS board member Rob Feckner on Wednesday told Nguyen he was respectful of the labor negotiation process but said that in his view, CalPERS is “being responsible.”
Pacheco said CalPERS is exceeding Cal/OSHA requirements.
“CalPERS is going above and beyond the minimal legal standard wherever we can to allow telework wherever operationally feasible instead of having team members come into the office in a mask,” he said in the email. “While it is not always operationally feasible, we provide the flexibility when possible.”
