As state workers are called into the office for more days, office capacity remains unclear

Governor Gavin Newsom is calling most state government employees to work at least four days a week in the office, starting this summer. Some of those workers are questioning if there will be enough office space in time. 

They’re also asking if the space will make sense for the work happening in it. 

Tim O’Connor — a trial attorney and president of the California Association of State Attorneys and Administrative Law Judges — said many state jobs have very specific requirements. 

“Our members that do confidential work for clients have to have a closed door office, so they can't just have some general open hoteling-type space. That’s just not going to work,” he said. “Even if there's an increase in availability of real estate because of a new building going up and having space available, it's got to be the right type of space, and I have concerns that it won't be the right type of space.”

He added the state is probably on too tight of a deadline to do that and that the state has downsized its office space since the pandemic began. 

Still, the state opened a new, 1.25-million-square foot complex last year. The impact of that is unclear – both the Department of General Services and the Department of Human Resources declined interviews for this story. 

Robert Haerr inspects medical devices for the state and serves as a director in the Bay Area for a state employee union, the California Association of Professional Scientists. He said CAPS told the Department of Human Resources that it’s concerned there’s no statewide plan to carry out the mandate. 

“Just the aging infrastructure that some of the buildings are in, and being that there's technological concerns and then space concerns about where to put conference rooms and where to put workers, all of those things would need to be prepared to be able to have folks working from those offices.

State departments have until April 1st to submit their spacing plans.