Officials also say they are worried that employees may let their guard down due to pandemic fatigue, the vaccine rollout and the gradual lifting of restrictions on business and leisure activities.
“Our job is to be prepared if we do (see a spike),” said Joe Parlette, Dayton’s deputy city manager. “This daily staff report is a mechanism for us to respond if things start to go wrong.”
In July, about 17 workers on average missed work each day because they tested positive for COVID-19 or were quarantined after potential exposure to the virus, according to a staffing report obtained by this newspaper. That meant about 1.2% of the city’s more than 1,400 employees who were expected to report to work were off due to the virus.
By September, the coronavirus-related absence rate fell to about 0.4%, or an average of six employees each day, the data show.
But absences started climbing after that.
About 60 employees each day in November, or about 4.2% of the on-duty workforce, were off work and quarantining.
In the first three weeks of December, about 5.9% of on-duty employees missed work to isolate for safety reasons (83 people per day), the data shows.
City officials raised concerns about growing absences during budget sessions in early December. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, about 134 employees were off work in quarantine, officials said.
“We do a daily staffing report and the numbers have been just growing exponentially,” said Diane Shannon, Dayton’s director of procurement, management and budget during a December presentation.
Absences fell in late December and early January. In a recent week, only about 30 employees were off work and quarantining, Parlette said.
But Parlette said he is concerned there could be another spike if staff don’t take proper precautions.
The city has stressed that what staff do in their leisure time is equally, if not more, important to staying healthy and avoiding infection, he said.
Parlette, however, acknowledges that abiding by safety protocols all the time is difficult.
The city has paid close attention to which departments and divisions have seen employees miss work, Parlette said, and fortunately the city has not experienced any major case clusters. He said this suggests staff are taking appropriate safety measures to avoid spreading illness while on the job.
Absences, he said, have been spread across about a dozen departments and many divisions, meaning there have not been worker shortages that put critical operations at risk of screeching to a halt.
Police academy shut down
In late November, the Dayton Police Department had 61 employees off due to testing positive for COVID-19, displaying symptoms of illness or being exposed to people who were infected, said Dayton police Lt. Col. Eric Henderson.
The police academy also shut down due to positive COVID-19 tests, which means the class will graduate two weeks later than expected, he said.
Credit: Marshall Gorby
Credit: Marshall Gorby
But the police department has taken steps to reduce potential exposure risks, such as using a telephone reporting unit to handle calls for service that do not require officers to be present at the scene, Henderson said.
“With the exception of the academy, no other work units have been largely impacted and we continue to have adequate staffing to respond to calls for service and follow-up on criminal investigations,” he said.
The city says it has taken a variety of steps to keep its workforce healthy in the last year, such as allowing employees to work from home if their jobs allow. The city also has closed facilities to the public and moved some services online to avoid face-to-face interactions.
The city has modified cleaning practices, rearranged the physical workplace, desks and work stations and has installed barriers, no-touch technology and new sanitization stations.
City workers have done a very good job of adjusting to a new normal and the city deserves credit for striving to create safe workplace conditions, said Ann Sulfridge, president of the Dayton Public Service Union Local 101, AFSCME Ohio Council 8.
The city has taken immediate action when employees get sick to try to prevent an outbreak, she said, and it seems like most workers who have become ill were exposed in their leisure time.
“We just have to be careful, and not let the guard down, and I do think people get COVID burnout, COVID fatigue,” she said. “For the most part, people try to be careful ... because they’re smart.”
Due to a voluntary separation program and a hiring freeze, the city has had fewer employees on the payroll, which has resulted in workers carrying heavier work loads, Sulfridge said. She said hopefully staffing levels will rebound some so that employees aren’t overworked.
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