WeWork Chiefs Tell Employees They Have An ‘Obligation’ To Stay Open During Coronavirus Pandemic

On Wednesday, WeWork told employees it intends to keep its building open as long as it is safe to do so.

The memo, signed by Chairman Marcelo Clauro and CEO Sandeep Mathrani, was sent one day after The Wall Street Journal reported that SoftBank was backing away from a deal to buy out WeWork’s existing shareholders for $3 billion and Forbes published an investigation into the shared-office company’s future in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Clauro and Mathrani wrote, “WeWork is a service provider and we have an obligation to keep our buildings open. In the same way we expect certain businesses to remain open for us – whether it be a fulfillment center to send us a package, a bank so we can handle finances, grocery stores and pharmacies to supply us our valued goods – we too have members counting on us to remain open so they can run their companies to generate revenue, pay their people, and continue serving their customers.”

In positioning its services as vital, WeWork may be trying to convince lawmakers that it is an “essential business.” In the San Francisco Bay Area (where WeWork has 27 locations) government restrictions already require residents to “shelter in place” and non-essential businesses to shut down. In WeWork’s home state of New York, where it has 68 locations, Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered non-essential businesses to cut their in-office workforce in half by Friday.

The memo feature comments from tenants in health care and financial services to buttress its point about remaining open even as eight offices, at least, have been shuttered temporarily due to someone falling ill with COVID-19. “Our company is working with health care companies, hospitals and delivery companies involved in combating COVID-19 and as such our business is essential and needs to remain supported and able to access WeWork locations throughout the country during this time,” wrote one unamed tenant in the memo.

A tech-consulting tenant told Forbes that he has been occasionally decamping to his WeWork office in Brooklyn Heights this week while his wife works from the one desk in their apartment. On Thursday, a lawyer in New York sent his assistant to pick up the mail from his firm’s offices in a WeWork, but told her to turn around when she reported there was no staff present and that she could not find anyone to confirm if their floor had been cleaned after a tenant elsewhere in the building tested positive for COVID-19.

In the memo, Clauro and Mathrani emphasized the efforts WeWork had taken, including increasing building cleanings, putting in place work-from-home policies for its own staff and giving workers Uber subsidies to avoid mass transportation. “Where we believe we can operate our buildings safely, and in accordance with government policies, we will keep those buildings open,” they wrote. WeWork declined to make either Clauro or Mathrani available for further comment.

WeWork, once worth $47 billion, publicly imploded last fall after failing to pull off its initial public offering. SoftBank booted cofounder and CEO Adam Neumann and put in $5 billion in new funding to right the ship.

Mathrani, who has deep real estate experience at Brookfield Properties and Vornado Realty Trust, was brought in last month to clean up the mess. Claure, the former Sprint CEO, was installed by SoftBank, where he is an executive, in October. Despite the aborted deal to buy out shareholders, they told employees not to worry about SoftBank’s commitment to WeWork itself: “SoftBank is WeWork’s largest shareholder and there should be no doubt in SoftBank’s support of WeWork and the strategic five-year financial plan that we all continue to execute on together.”

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.