Putting the ‘take’ in ‘give and take’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/05/2024 (837 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a lot of Canadian workers, it doesn’t sound like an unreasonable request: instead of coming into the office for two days of the five-day work week, federal employees are being told they have to come in for a minimum of three instead. And there will be a four-month transitional period, to boot.

For those in the private sector — often working with far-inferior pensions and benefits when compared to public sector employees — it’s a real slap in the face, especially because many private sector employees were brought back to the office ages ago.

It’s easy to understand why federal employees would prefer the status quo.

There are benefits to hybrid or remote work: no need to spend time commuting to work, and therefore no commuting costs. No costs for an office wardrobe, and no need, perhaps, for after-school programs for kids.

The ability, for many, to order their own workday, and work at their own pace. A better work/life balance.

But the hybrid workplace — even if it turns out to be the wave of the future for the reasons above, and others — isn’t simply a given the moment employees decide they want to have it.

Why?

Because the conditions of employment aren’t magically chosen by one side or, for that matter, by the other. An employer makes a job offer with certain terms, and you decide if those terms are acceptable.

COVID upended that: with efforts to control the pandemic by shutting down business as usual, employers had to find quick and effective work-arounds, just the way that the federal government had to find ways to support workers who lost jobs in the hospitality sector, for example, or ways to support businesses that risked closure as their customers vanished.

One of the ways was letting those workers who could work from home, do exactly that. (Never forget that scores of essential employees didn’t get that choice. They just kept doing their jobs. Some got pay bonuses for staying on the job, others didn’t.)

But the idea was that those extraordinary measures could end just as quickly when the extraordinary situation did.

None of those things became implicit parts of a “new” employment contract unless they were specifically spelled out that way: in other words, unless your union — or you personally — have negotiated for them. In fact, in the case of federal government employees, the right to allow remote work is spelled out as being specifically the employer’s right, except for in the case of employees who need it as a workplace accommodation. And the federal government has said it deliberately held on to that right to enable it to say where, when — and for how many days a week — hybrid would be allowed.

What federal civil service unions want to do is to change the terms of their employment contracts, without bothering with the give-and-take of negotiation.

It’s fair enough if unions and their members want to make hybrid workplaces a goal in contract talks. It’s also fair enough if the employer — in this case, the federal government — feels that their employees will have to make some sort of concessions at the bargaining table to offset the gains they want to make by working from home. (Don’t forget, the employer might make savings as well, by being able to forgo some office space rentals, for example.)

But that give and take shouldn’t just be an arbitrary “take” by one side, and a “give” by the other.

The federal government unions are now promising a “summer of discontent” over the proposed change to three days in the office.

They may well find it’s not just their membership who are, shall we say, discontented with the turn of events.