Scheduling note: WhatMatters is taking Juneteenth off and will return to your inboxes Monday.<\/p>\n
Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s mandate for state workers to return to the office four days a week is back on, and many public employees are fighting to stop it with little time to spare.<\/p>\n
Dozens of them showed up at a Senate hearing Wednesday to support a bill that would strengthen telework standards for state agencies and \u2014 they hope \u2014 result in more flexibility than Newsom would allow.<\/p>\n
The Senate\u2019s committee on labor, public employment and retirement advanced the proposal<\/a> in a 4-1 vote. The measure itself would not stop the governor\u2019s July 1 mandate, which Newsom argues would increase accountability, revitalize downtown Sacramento and improve government services.<\/p>\n Instead, the bill would enable agencies to shape their own policies. Citing a 2024 state audit<\/a>, Assemblymember Alex Lee, the bill\u2019s author, said that allowing state workers to work remotely would save the state money, reduce pollution and boost productivity and employee morale.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lee, a Milpitas Democrat: \u201cAs we grapple with the affordability crisis, we want to make sure that our downtowns and urban cores are not places where workers have to be, but where workers want to be. \u2026 It\u2019s not fair to shackle our office workers to be the entire bedrock for downtowns.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s proposal would also require agencies to provide written justification if employees must work in-office, and the state\u2019s Department of General Services would have to create a dashboard to display the cost-effectiveness and other benefits of state telework programs.<\/p>\n Like many employers, California\u2019s state government embraced remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2024 Newsom has been calling for state employees to return to the office, initially requiring two days out of the workweek and then bumping that up to four. Though a four-day mandate was supposed to kick in last year, Newsom postponed the policy<\/a> for some state worker unions during labor negotiations as a way to cut payroll expenses.<\/p>\n State worker unions \u2014 except the ones representing public safety employees \u2014 are supporting Lee\u2019s measure. They include the state\u2019s largest, SEIU Local 1000, which is in contract negotiations with Newsom. It has given at least $2 million to current California lawmakers, according to CalMatters\u2019 Digital Democracy database<\/a>.<\/p>\n Said one state worker with the California Department of Pesticide Regulation at the hearing: \u201cWe spent seven years and millions of dollars to go paperless \u2026 I can do my work evaluating pesticides from the space station if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n More state worker news: Health insurance plans for California public employees won\u2019t be required to expand coverage for GLP-1 weight loss drugs. We told you last week about legislation that would have required CalPERS to provide that benefit<\/a> to its 1.3 million members. But that part of the bill was removed at an Assembly hearing<\/a> this week after the pension fund and health insurer said it would drive up premiums and cost taxpayers about $187 million a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scheduling note: WhatMatters is taking Juneteenth off and will return to your inboxes Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s mandate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-365889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}