Frequently Asked Questions - Coronavirus (COVID-19)

By The Department of the Navy, 108 pages*, Department of the Navy, 2020
Reviewed by Brock Logan, April 4, 2020

Absent a severe case of insomnia that has proven resistant to treatment, I cannot recommend this title. In truth, it is so choppy and poorly written that it is unlikely to even induce sleep.

A physical manifestation of the currently popular idea that, “We’re all about to learn which meetings could have been an email,” this tome is intended to be the consolidation of guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of the Navy (DON) on dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as it effects civilian employees of the DON.

Unfortunately, rather than pulling all of the information from the three sources into one clear and concise publication, the material is simply “cut and pasted” and haphazardly stacked into 273 frequently redundant “Questions”, each of which is followed by often conflicting “Answers”.

As a civilian employee of the DON currently assigned (against my will) to telework from home, the handling of the various versions of the question, “Can an employee be mandated to telework from home?” is amongst the most notable sections.

Careful analysis of the material, complete with citations to the various sections of the U.S. Code and corresponding Code of Federal Regulations entries, reveals that the answer is: “Yes," “No," “Yes, but only under this very specific condition," and “Yes, under either of the following conditions.” In case that isn’t clear enough to the reader, there is also Question 205, “Is telework voluntary?” and its corresponding answer, “Yes. An agency may not compel an employee to telework, even if the duties of the position make that employee 'telework eligible,’” followed by a notation that once an employee has voluntarily agreed to telework, he may be mandated to telework “outside of his normal telework schedule.”

The one glimmer of a promise of useful guidance appears in the contemplation of this question: May a supervisor who has previously denied a disabled employee’s request to telework as a reasonable accommodation for his disability, where the employee is now required to teleworking in an effort to help prevent the spread of the virus, once again deny the employee’s requested accommodation to telework once the COVID crisis has subsided?

Hope is dashed, though, when the answer, citing no less an authority than the transcript of an EEOC Webinar in March 2020, gives the typical lawyerly response, “It depends.”

Should you find yourself needing to determine how to handle a specific situation involving a civilian employee of the DON dealing with the coronavirus, save yourself some trouble and frustration, skip this read and simply ask that guy in Human Resources. He won’t have any clearer guidance than provided here, but at least you’ll have cover if he advises you based on the answer to question 73, when the opposing answer to the same question at number 86 was the acceptable course of action.

*Ed. Note: The version of the Guidance Memorandum referenced in the review was not immediately available online. The button below instead links to the more recent, even longer version issued by the Department of the Navy on May 8, 2020.