Charter Communications is choosing not to follow any of the warnings regarding the coronavirus and asking their employees to come to work as usual. The telecommunications giant is doing this despite having several of its employees test positive for COVID-19. The federal government of the USA has advised all employers to tell their workers to work from home.
Employees Told To Report For Work
Still, Charter Communications has insisted on its 15,000 employees to come to their corporate offices. One such employee, Nick Wheeler, spoke to TechCrunch about his frustration regarding this matter.
The video operations engineer sent an email to his employees titled “Coronavirus – Why are we still in the office?” The email read as follows, “The CDC guidelines are clear. The CDPHE guidelines are clear. The WHO guidelines are clear. The science of social distancing is real. We have the complete ability to do our jobs entirely from home.”
He further added in the email, “Coming into the office now is pointlessly reckless. It’s also socially irresponsible. Charter, like the rest of us, should do what is necessary to help reduce the spread of coronavirus.
“Social distancing has a real slowing effect on the virus — that means lives can be saved. A hazard condition isn’t acceptable for the infrastructure beyond the short-term. Why is it acceptable for our health?”
One Employee Resigned
Wheeler's superiors at Charter Communications reprimanded him for this email. They told him that his email was “irresponsible” and was “inciting fear”. He was also given two choices – work from the office like everyone else, or take sick leave.
He instead chose to resign from the company. Wheeler expressed his confusion as to why Charter employees weren't allowed to work from home even after the World Health Organisation declared that the Coronavirus was now a pandemic.
Charter Communications The Only Company Doing This
Charter Communications is seemingly the only large corporation that is defying the quarantine guidelines. Tom Rutledge, their chief executive, threw his weight around this policy, too. In an email addressed to the entirety to the entirety of their staff, he wrote “You may have heard that some companies are instituting broad remote working policies for some of their employees. While we are preparing for that possibility by geography, Charter is not doing the same today.”
The coronavirus has infected more than 200,000 people worldwide. More than 7,000 of these are in the US alone.
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