All City employees have been reclassified as essential and been told to report to work…including library, parks, HR, etc. There are 20,000 people who work for the City of Houston. Call your city council member and demand to know why.

People I know who work for the city are being offered the option of two weeks of unpaid leave, or come in and do busy work. They are literally scrambling to invent work, and for what reason? Optics, I’m guessing. Sylvester Turner cares more about his political career than the lives of people that work for the city, and the lives of Houstonians at large.

This is why we will look like NYC in a very short amount of time. He won’t even follow his own “stay at home” order.

There are plenty of library employees who checkout and shelve books, provide reference assistance, who are in many cases the only income source for loved ones, who would in ANY OTHER natural disaster be given what is called “disaster time off”. There is even a payroll code to enter for it—DTOF. They are being put in harm’s way with meaningless make-work. Meanwhile, the highest paid employees get to work from home.

Please call your city councilor.