Union warns of safety issues after EPA cuts desk phones
Source: The Hill
06/10/26 6:04 PM ET
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) replaced employee desk phones with calling software used on their laptops, something the union says poses safety issues, including during a recent medical emergency.
Justin Chen, president of the biggest EPA employee union, told The Hill that the additional software that’s supposed to handle 9-1-1 geolocation “doesn’t really work, apparently.”. Chen said that this recently came up during an emergency situation in the EPA’s San Francisco office, adding the issue “ended up delaying a response.”
Another EPA employee said that the emergency service software “has not worked since the time it was installed” last year. “It pops up on your computer and it just says, ‘unable to connect,’ and then we’ve been instructed to just click on the ‘x’ box and close the program,” they said, adding the direction came from managers at the agency.
In the case of the medical emergency, the regular call software worked, but “9-1-1’s response was delayed by the fact that they could not locate where the phone call was coming from,” the staffer said. Ultimately, the person who had the medical emergency was OK, the employee said, but Chen said the situation puts safety at risk.
Read more: https://thehill.com/newsletters/energy-environment/5919111-union-warns-of-safety-issues-after-epa-cuts-desk-phones/