FCC Move Overshadowed by COVID-19 Concerns

The FCC’s planned move to new headquarters at Sentinel Square III near Union Station in Washington has been delayed for an unknown period by COVID-19, and employees said in interviews they're more concerned about when and how they will be required to return to work than what building they will be doing it in. “Employees want to make sure that if and when they are called upon to return to the existing office either to resume duties on site or to pack up their workspaces, that health and safety precautions are taken,” said National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon in a statement to us.

The move had been planned for early this summer, and would have involved employees packing up their offices and then teleworking while a moving company transferred everything to the new building. Offices were in varying states of packing readiness when the current Portals building was closed because of COVID-19 in March, and packing can’t proceed with staffers working from their homes, employees noted. Most employees we spoke with said they hadn’t been to the Portals in more than a month.

“The date of the move is to be determined and has been delayed due to COVID-19,” said a public notice Thursday (see 2004300060). That was in the final sentence of the PN on the commission's new seal. An FCC spokesperson told us in April the move will be delayed at least two months (see 2004130057). The agency declined to comment for this story.

Every FCC employee interviewed was pleased with the FCC’s handling of COVID-19, but several said they're concerned about White House pressure to reopen federal agencies. “The Federal government is actively planning to ramp back up government operations to the maximum extent possible, as local conditions warrant, consistent with the National guidelines for Opening Up America Again," said a memo from OMB and Office of Personnel Management heads to executive agencies April 20.

Taking public transit and crowding into elevators and building entranceways seem dangerously risky during the current pandemic, FCC employees told us. Chairman Ajit Pai said employee safety is his most important concern for reopening the FCC. He declined to specify what standards or agency advice would guide that decision (see 2004230046).

NTEU said the commission should take precautions for employee safety before reopening. “These would include small groups of employees being allowed in at any one time, agency-provided masks and other appropriate personal protective equipment, with strict requirements on maintaining adequate physical distancing in elevators and hallways,” said Reardon. The union issued a flyer of “demands” for a safe return last week (see 2004270055).

The move's delay creates questions about the FCC’s lease. A General Services Administration spokesperson told us the lease had been planned to end August. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the agency set to replace the FCC in the Portals, planned its move for November. The GSA said it’s “unknown” whether that schedule will have to be revised. FCC officials told us they expect it to be.

The FCC’s new 11-story building is expected to be ready for the move, according to a spokesperson for building owner MetLife Investment Management. “Construction is proceeding generally on schedule and has not been materially impacted by the Covid-19 crisis.” The interior will have a blue and green color scheme, which was chosen through an employee vote according to a 2017 memorandum of understanding between NTEU and the agency.

The FCC will occupy just under 400,000 of the building’s 545,000 square feet, the MOU said, about a 30 percent reduction in space from what it occupies in the Portals. The building has an underground parking area, and each commissioner will have a 250-square-foot office, while the chairman’s office will be 300 square feet, the MOU said. The agency won’t change floor numbering or name floors of the building to make the commissioners’ floor the eighth floor as it did when it moved into the Portals, FCC officials told us. The new offices are expected to feature an employee shuttle to Union Station and a daycare center for 75 to 100 children, the MOU said.

Many FCC workers who have dedicated offices now won’t have them in the new building, commission employees said. The building follows open office trends that have been instituted in other federal agencies and will employ cubicles and desks that can be raised into standing desks, the employees reported. Since many of those workspaces will be shared, the new arrangement is another point of employee concern about returning to work with the pandemic ongoing, one staffer said. “The office move is an opportunity to reconfigure the new space to better accommodate physical distancing and adding more barriers between individual workspaces,” said Reardon.

Many communications attorneys don’t expect the crosstown move to affect the way they do business with the FCC. “There’s so little done anymore in person,” said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Anne Crump. “The current pandemic conditions -- where even the small amount of in-person contact at the FCC that previously existed has been eliminated -- show that little is likely to practically change after the move," she said. Law firms are also unlikely to relocate to be near the new building, lawyers predicted. There’s no cluster of communications law firms around the Portals. “It’s just a different destination,” said Crump.