State workers could be in-person ‘in some matter of months,’ Murphy says

Gov. Phil Murphy predicted state workers won’t return to their offices for months yet despite growing dissatisfaction with public employees’ remote work among some legislators.

“There has to be a reason why we’re back in-person. I would hope these numbers continue to go in the right direction. We’re going to get there,” he said during Monday’s virus briefing. “My guess is in some matter of months, but again I think it’ll depend on the actual function, what you’re doing.”

Earlier Monday, Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) and State Sen. Kristin Corrado (R-Totowa) called on Murphy to command Department of Labor and Workforce Development employees tasked with handling unemployment claims back to their offices.

Over past months, legislators — Democrats privately and Republicans not — have expressed dissatisfaction with remote state workers, blaming them for an increased workload for legislative staffers.

Murphy disagreed with the claim that a remote environment was slowing claims processing.

“Do you physically need to be in the building or can you do what they’re doing by phone and/or through the internet? And the decision has been made, up until now, that the former model doesn’t give you any more of an ability to get a claim processed,” he said.

It’s not clear how remote work impacts the processing of unemployment claims, many of which have been directed to legislative offices after delays at the Department of Labor, which has received more than 2.1 million claims since the pandemic began last March.

The closures aren’t universal. State employees at the Motor Vehicle Commission continue to show up to work in-person, as do some legislative aides.