De Blasio is sending 80K NYC workers back to the office in May

Some 80,000 members of the city’s municipal workforce will return back to their offices in May, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday — dubbing it an “important step on the way to the full recovery of New York City.”

Those employees who have been working remotely since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic are slated to return starting on May 3, Hizzoner said during a City Hall press briefing.

“Our city workforce is going to be coming back,” de Blasio said, explaining that those city workers make up “folks who are not already working in frontline positions, which is the vast majority of our city workers.”

“The folks who work in office settings are the ones overwhelmingly coming back beginning on May 3rd,” de Blasio said.

There will be “strict safety measures in place” as those employees return to the offices, the mayor added. Though there will be no COVID-19 vaccine mandate, face masks will be required in settings where social distancing is not possible.

“We’re going to use all of the tools that we have learned about – distancing, about ventilation, the right way to lay out workspaces,” de Blasio said.

“We’re going to make it safe, but we need our city workers back in their offices where they can do the most to help their fellow New Yorkers.”

There will be “staggered schedules” for those returning to the offices, Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin said.

“We will be doing staggered schedules, you know, making sure that people are in the office sometimes, working remotely sometimes, so that we can ensure enough space to keep our employees safe,” said Anglin.

In total, there are 325,378 full- and part-time municipal workers in the Big Apple. About 80 percent of the city’s workforce has been on the job in in-person roles due to the frontline nature of the work.

There are more than 300,000 municipal workers in the Big Apple in total.