NYC Workers Heading Back To Offices In May [POLL]

NEW YORK — New York City public workers will be returning to their offices for the first time since the new coronavirus shut everything down a year ago.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that people who work in city offices will start to return May 3.

Getting about 80,000 municipal office workers back to city offices will be a major step in the recovery of the city, he said.

Laura Anglin, the city's deputy mayor for operations, said the workers will be brought back in phases, taking into account health and safety concerns.

A study by Partnership for New York City discovered that almost 500,000 people who work in Manhattan offices — other than city employees — are planning to get back to their offices by Sept. 21.

The partnership also found that 22 percent of companies are going to require full-time attendance from employees once the offices open up again. Slightly more than two-thirds of companies said they will implement a hybrid model, allowing for a split office-home work schedule.

Only 9 percent of companies said they will be leaving it up to their employees to decide whether or not to get back in the office.

All of this could change, for the better, if more vaccines are made available to more people or, for the worse, if the vaccines prove to not be effective against the variants of the coronavirus.

Now it's your chance to weigh in on the issue. Vote in our unscientific poll and tell us what you think in the comments.