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Much like low-wage “essential workers” during the thick of the pandemic, federal public servants have discovered in recent weeks that they are simultaneously too valuable to continue working from home, yet not worth enough to negotiate with.
The Treasury Board Secretariat’s May 1 announcement that federal workers will be required to work on-site a minimum of three days per week beginning in September was made without negotiation or consultation with unions. Chris Aylward, President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), called the decision “purely political,” stating that tens of thousands of workers will go back to “ill-equipped and poorly maintained offices.”
PSAC and other major public service unions have vowed a “summer of discontent” in retaliation for the government’s abrupt and unilateral update to its hybrid work policy, which currently requires workers in the office either two or three days a week.
Of PSAC members surveyed by the union, 85 percent strongly oppose the three-day in-office mandate, while fully 90 percent are prepared to take action against the government.
And while a recent Angus Reid poll indicates a majority of Canadians want federal workers to spend more time in their offices, opposition to the government’s actions is higher among unionized workers.
There are a few interrelated issues at play here.
First, the government’s insistence that workers return to their offices appears to be driven more by short-term business interests and a desire to revitalize Ottawa’s downtown economy than by any empirical evidence showing that more time in the office boosts productivity.
According to Nathan Prier, President of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), there is no evidence to support the claim that productivity and collaboration is enhanced by physically reporting to an office.
“It’s important to note that the employer has not measured this in any way,” said Prier in an interview with Canadian Dimension. “It has simply noted the recent actions of large corporations like Nike and used this as cover for a total lack of policy. We know the federal government has been lobbied hard by downtown business coalitions, commercial landlords, and conservative politicians like Doug Ford, and it seems like the interests of those groups won over the clearly stated interest of the overwhelming majority of their workers.”
It’s important to remember that, before the pandemic, many companies offered remote work as a perk. Whether an employee is more productive at home or in an office is ultimately subjective and contextual. If working from home was considered a benefit offered by some........