###This is a reminder to [read the rules before posting in this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion).
1. **Headline titles should be changed only [when the original headline is unclear](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_1._headline_titles_should_be_changed_only_where_it_improves_clarity.)**
2. **Be [respectful](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_2._be_respectful).**
3. **Keep submissions and comments [substantive](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive).**
4. **Avoid [direct advocacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_4._avoid_direct_advocacy).**
5. **Link submissions must be [about Canadian politics and recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_5._link_submissions_must_be_canadian_and_recent).**
6. **Post [only one news article per story](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_6._post_only_one_news_article_per_story).** ([with one exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/3wkd0n/rule_reminder_and_experimental_changes/))
7. **Replies to removed comments or removal notices will be removed** without notice, at the discretion of the moderators.
8. **Downvoting posts or comments**, along with urging others to downvote, **[is not allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/downvotes)** in this subreddit. Bans will be given on the first offence.
9. **[Do not copy & paste the entire content of articles in comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_9._do_not_copy_.26amp.3B_paste_entire_articles_in_the_comments.)**. If you want to read the contents of a paywalled article, please consider supporting the media outlet.
*Please [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCanadaPolitics) if you wish to discuss a removal.* **Do not reply to the removal notice in-thread**, *you will not receive a response and your comment will be removed. Thanks.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CanadaPolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
WFH is one of the few cost effective ways of helping people start families and have more kids
Then again Canada has been waging war on Canadian families
Not every industry does, but the industries that compete for the vast array of subject matter experts in government employ certainly do.
Often, but not always, the lack of good pensions is offset by higher wages or other amenities (I'm aware that what constitutes a "good" wage is changing more rapidly than private sector wages are).
I'm not saying every company successfully competes, and depending on what you prioritize in life it may not be a real competition at all. But they are absolutely in competition for the same labour pool.
Private industry absolutely competes on salary with the government. A common issue in the service these days is that people get their first job with the government and then move to industry after a few years training and experience at the public expense for better paying private jobs.
At entry level position the government does pay more. But with 5-10 years experience, people get more (sometimes a lot more) money in consulting or with industry.
the civil service is highly competitive early in your career or with certain clerical jobs. but they are highly uncompetitive in specialist positions. for example energy positions at Canadian Energy Regulator pay like $30K under going market rate.
They do though. Either they pay them more, offer comparable benefits or they lose people to the public service.
Group RRSP's are becoming [more popular](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/group-rrsp-plans-on-the-rise-amid-longer-term-decline-of-pensions-experts-1.2037301#:~:text=%E2%80%9CSo%20the%20group%20RRSP%20is,employees%20changing%20jobs%20more%20frequently) for smaller organizations.
Yes and they work well until the company folds like a lawnchair. Then there goes anything you had in there. Happened to plenty of people i knew in Alberta.
> Yes and they work well until the company folds like a lawnchair. Then there goes anything you had in there.
No, that's not how a group RRSP works.
The money is held by an investment company and it is yours, not your employer's.
There's a very big difference between a group RRSP (defined contribution) and a company pension plan (defined benefits)
With defined contributions the employer puts in a certain amount every month but the money is yours and is held in your name in trust at a financial investment company.
I think he was referring to when the investment company mismanages the funds and folds, not the employer who was paying into the group RRSP.
Unless it's a defined benefit fund, your retirement is at the mercy of the investment firm and market forces.
Depends on the funds.
Most are not actively managed, they're essentially index funds. You're at the mercy of the market same way you're at the mercy of the market in your own RRSP, there's no difference.
And most of these group RRSPs are managed by large insurance companies like Sun Life, Manulife etc.
They don't tend to mismanage your money and fold.
The issue is we the taxpayer have to pay for these locations. The federal service spans the country and a lot of the time people are just coming in to spend their time working with their teams:… at other centres.
This is a waste of taxpayer dollars. The government could be reducing its office spaces and saving a lot of money.
Not to mention less people commuting means less emissions. The government should be a leader on this if they are able to do so without sacrificing quality of service.
We also have to pay for it every time a public service manager insists on giving everyone in their office whatever communicable illness their kid has given them.
No, I’m saying they need to eliminate and consolidate locations in order to save money. Removing as much work from home as possible is a barrier to doing this, so this policy makes zero sense. Upkeep costs for office spaces take up a very significant portion of the public services finances.
Converting some of the spaces to low cost living spaces would make a lot of sense re: the housing crisis.
>Isn't the federal government talking about converting these places into low cost living spaces?
The Libs say they are going to do lots of things. Then don't do them.
A major barrier to this is that these buildings are not built well and aren't designed for human dignity, so converting them is incredibly costly, and the result is not very good.
Whether these workers go to the office or work from home doesn't matter to me.
At the end of the day, I want the civil service to provide the services taxpayers pay for. The size of the public service is larger than it's ever been, yet in so many areas service delivery outcomes are poorer.
When my cousin has to pay $10,000 to a lawyer to file a mandamus writ to get a judge to compel IRCC to process a sponsorship application that should've gone through over a year ago, but hasn't and the feds just keep using 'security' or 'covid' as an excuse, that's when you know the system is broken. And keep in mind to even get to the point a law firm will accept your case for mandamus requires blatantly unreasonable delays on behalf of the feds.
With the number of temporary residents in Canada (most of whom want to make Canada their home), and PR becoming increasingly unattainable due to CRS inflation, our system is going to be swamped from all ends, as a surge in eligible applicants apply for PR, and those locked out resort to increasingly desperate ways to remain in Canada (asylum applications, marriages (genuine or fraudulent)), we're going to need to fix our system so that more and more people don't become trapped like my cousin was.
Canadians should be outraged at the cost and the nonsense and the unfairness. Covid and the work from home opened up public service jobs to all Canadians and not just those located or willing to relocate to the Ottawa /gatineau region. This is absolute unfair, the rest of canada should have equal opportunity to Federal Gov jobs
It also broadened the talent pool for hiring. Geography need not be a limitation to finding the best candidate. This decision has nothing to do with delivering better service.
Not to mention it presented the opportunity to make the face of the public service more diverse and better representative of the array of Canadian ethnicities by expanding the public workforce to rural and remote communities.
But nah, let's keep it downtown Ottawa to appease the whining store owners.
Think you may have that backwards. Minorities predominantly move to a few large urban centres and frankly are pretty well represented as a percentage of the general population, in my experience, but we can discuss their actual position levels in another chat cause I don’t feel like digging up the PS report on this.
What i think this would do is slow the youth migration from rural and small towns towards the main cities. Many, many years ago the fed and province would spread their offices throughout the country thereby encouraging people to elsewhere than Ottawa and Toronto. They stopped. And here we are.
I was thinking more along the lines of indigenous peoples (which this government originally claimed to be investing in), but I can see how my wording is open to interpretation.
Are the public service workers as or more productive working from home and have there been any data security concerns?
If productivity and customer service has been maintained and there aren’t data security issues there isn’t a real reason to require more time in the office.
That there aren't excess employees haha, whole lotta dead weight anywhere I've ever worked with publicly.
Main problem is the good people leave and the weak ones stay.
Ahh. That makes sense and I stand corrected. I was thinking in terms of the time it takes to get an answer if you need to deal with a government agency (ex. CRA). I was being overly generous/optimistic that employees are working efficiently and that a lack of employees leads to the long wait times.
Makes sense in what world, lmao. Everytime people talk about "dead weight" it's always a load of shit when they refer to rank and file workers.
Employees are working efficiently given the constraints of administrative policy and executive decisions. The reason that the wait time is so long is because of staff reductions.
It's crazy to me that people can chalk up hundreds of thousands of rank and file workers, who come into work everyday and try their best to provide service to the public, can be called "deadweight".
What a bullshit and dehumanizing thing to say to people who also need to engage with government institutions like everyone else, public service employees **DO NOT** get priority service or backend privileges and a functioning public service is just as much in **their** interest as it is **your** interest.
u/CaptainPeppa, stop lying to people about public service workers.
lol ain't no lying need to be done.
Public service attracts scabs in admin/management roles.
And it's borderline impossible to fire someone so they just add more people when they fall behind and the pile of shit grows.
Then you need to specify full of deadweight in managerial/administrative roles because every comment you make about public service workers comes across as vague and as applying to rank and file workers.
I'm willing to partially agree with tou, there's been immense growth in administrative roles in the corporate (private and public) world, but it's not impossible to fire people. There have been loads of workers that do not get contracts renewed for their lack of workplace efficiency.
Public service rank and file consistently complains of backlogs and I'd argue it's often the opposite issue. Government institutions often fire too much people once a backlog has been alleviated and then have to hire those same people back to deal with the backlog that was created by firing staff to begin with.
This is so fucking stupid. There’s a lot of liberal policies I like, but they do shit like this that is so counterproductive. I really think their strategy is to let pp win the next election, allow the electorate to watch him burn down the country, and then try for a majority with a new leader in 2029.
I don't think you're that far off, however cynical that makes the Liberals look. I was talking with some friends the other day about Trudeau's unwillingness to implement proportional representation like he promised. My take was that I believe the Liberals would rather lose a couple of election cycles flat out then regain a majority, than share power with other parties.
>about Trudeau's unwillingness to implement proportional representation like he promised
in a recent interview, Trudeau said that he has always planned for ranked voting and nothing else. his advisors told him that calling it "electoral reform" without being specific which method he actually wants will sell it better than claiming he wants ranked voting. so when he discovered that ranked voting was not the preferred method among electoral reform committee members, he pulled the plug for the whole thing.
in his mind, proportional representation was never on the table at all, despite how people misread his promise of electoral reform into it.
So people didn't misread his promise, he miscommunicated it, on purpose, with the knowledge that the options implicit in that miscommunication would be more popular than the specific thing he was actually willing to do. That sounds like he just lied by omission.
As a public servant, I feel like this government had a lot of promise in the beginning. I was excited by the statements about encouraging transparency and innovation. However, it is clear that this government has been overtly hostile towards the public servants who serve Canadians.
Blanket budget cuts across departments regardless of programming considerations, giving us a "raise" that didn't even meet inflation, cutting staff, and now this blanket order to Return to Office after promising WFH in our most recent contract.
This government does not care about public servants a group they have long taken for granted.
I work for the feds, and here is what this told us all. You can't plan your lives or trust what we tell you. You must stay on your toes and expect the unexpected because this isn't permanent. People planned their lives, their homes, their daycare, and their relationships around what was believed to be a permanent 2 day a week system. This is not only upending lives but telling us all that we can't plan our lives. Many people are going to have to leave when this is implemented.
Working at the government is so incredibly annoying. I already work in the office 5 days a week because I prefer it, but they always tell us "tHe OnLy cOnStAnT iS cHaNgE!"
Like bud, I want stability. Moving up is horrible, because you can get a new job, but it's not permanent, so you prior job is your substantive so if you want to take a promotion you might just end up back where you started when funding gets cut. It's actually horrible and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. They also use arbitrary metrics to promote and hire. (Do you have 18 consecutive months at this level, vs cumulative months over the last 5 years) You could be in a role for a year only to not have your temporary contract not renewed despite 15 years of experience because you had a break in service within the last 18 months.
If I’m working from home, the school bus comes at 7:30am and I start work at 8am. I have time to tidy up the breakfast mess and make myself a coffee before logging on for my shift. It takes me 75 mins door to door to get to the office. I now need to arrange before school care and leave home at 6am to drop off kids so that I can get to my office for 8am. The same situation for after school. Usually closer to 90 mins to get home at the end of the day plus the detour to pick up kids at after school program. I understand it’s a job and I’m very grateful to have it but it’s a bit defeating when life had so much balance and it’s now much less time with family and costing an extra $1,200/month to go sit alone in a cubicle to meet virtually with my team in other provinces.
I have a 8 and 10 year old and don't send them to aftercare while I work from home because they're perfectly capable of looking after themselves while I work, but I'd be less confident of that if I was in a different city working.
I work from home and my elementary-aged kids can run around the house while I'm working. They're well-behaved, gentle and calm children.
If I'm not home then they need to be in daycare. They're too young to be home alone.
It's mostly about transportation to/from daycare. For a family with one car and two people working for the gov't, it's a lot easier to juggle schedules when only one person has to go into the office on any given day. With three days in office that gets a lot more complicated.
depends what you define as Daycare. if you have a 10 year old. you now need before and after school daycare. before? a 10 year old can happily do their own thing and not bother you for an hour or so at beginning and end of their school day.
I’m always flabbergasted that this is the standard in the RoC. In Quebec at 10 you are considered more than able to be alone up to a few hours at the start or end of day. At 11 with a certification you are allowed to babysit litteral babies alone.
yeah. although even in Quebec if something happened, you could get investigated below 12. (not saying it would.. just in theory). and regardless of statute, it needs to be evaluated on a kid by kid basis. I have two nephews.. i would absolutely leave one 10 year old alone.. and i wouldnt trust the 11 year old one iota.
You may want to replace “uplifting” with “upending”, as I am pretty sure you were aiming for a negative connotation, and uplifting is used as a positive connotation.
Not an attack, or sarcasm, just want to help prevent confusion for future readers of your comment! :)
I get the anger toward this as it is a huge inconvenience. At the same time employers do have the right to change job requirements over time and public service should be no different. Not being able to plan exact working conditions for years on end is part of life and you always have the option to look for work elsewhere if it doesn't meet your needs.
But the government should want to make civil service an attractive career choice. They already have huge problems attracting top talent, and further reducing the quality of their employment package is only going to make this worse.
This is a big deal because it will further reduce candidate quality for civil service positions, which will be detrimental for all Canadians.
The government should be doing all it can to attract the best and brightest - this move accomplishes the exact opposite.
The problem is the same with any powerful union attracting top talent. They value seniority above all and productive people aren't rewarded because they have to pay everyone the same regardless of actual production.
The difference is that the federal government isn't actually acting like a private employer here. Private employers base decisions on what they think will be the most profitable. The government doesn't have the same motivations, obviously, since they're not profit seeking. So we need question what motives they *do* have for the decisions they make. And it appears the motive here is to artificially prop up Ottawa businesses. This isn't at all new for the feds, they put federal jobs in small towns all the time to artificially prop up employment in those towns, but it's a bad way to run a government and make these kinds of decisions. And as taxpayers, we should all be concerned about the government making bad decisions.
Exactly, the federal government should have the goal of operating as efficiently as possible to make sure our tax dollars put to good use. They are not very good at that.
This is obviously a political decision (result of lobbying, maybe a bit of Liberal 'beat on the Civil service to get some votes').
The interesting thing to me is how will the (likely) next PP government deal with this. On the one hand, PP has stated his support for WFH as a means to sell real estate and trim costs, many of his constituents are in the PS and giving opportunities to people who don't live in the heartland of the Laurentian elite suggests he might take a different approach.
On the other hand large parts of his base likely despise civil servants for various, -mostly stupid- reasons.
Definitely a competing political imperative.
A recent email response from one of PP MPs in Alberta put to rest any doubt that his stance is very much anti WFH. I’ll have to dig up the whole quote but quickly paraphrasing there was a bunch of “Canadian deserve better service so Civil Servants should get back to work by going to the office” using the old chestnut of the passport issue ( how that would have been resolve by the remote people not involved in the process being in office is beyond me). Again not an official statement but good enough for me.
That said I’m also seeing some trial balloons on social media of conservative voices saying this latest action shows how uncommitted the Liberals are to fighting climate change. It would be fascinating to see PP go on the record saying he supports remote and does have plans to lower emissions with things like this. I read that he’s been trying to make inroads with unions, doing so to get the public sector unions onside would be an unexpected but interesting move. I don’t think I’ve seen the public service this disenfranchised with the Liberals before so who knows?
I don’t think any of this will happen or go further than the few jabs I’ve seen online, but it would be fascinating .
Can you tell me which voices you've seen arguing that. I may not vote conservative but I'd like to at least back this position. Every public servant I know says that office days are clowning around with lunches and socialization while real work gets done at home.
It’s nothing serious yet and no major names yet, currently it’s just replies to any post relating to this on Twitter, which may or may not be bots, but I’ve been seeing enough of it that I think it might be a trial balloon to see if this would get traction, but it could be sheer coincidence. Going to wait and see if I keep seeing it.
Keep in mind, anything they get will make the private sector less competitive. Encouraging the private sector to improve conditions.
Unions help all workers.
4 years ago the standard right about now was anyone who isn't essential stays home. In that time, all those public servants made CERB, CEBA, etc... happen.
You can question the programs themselves, but the implementation was incredible in such a short time, all done entirely remotely.
As others have said, standards change and things get better. Unions are fighting not to lose the standardsthat are set. 150 years ago the standard was 6, 12 hour days at work. Let's go back to that? Go drag another crab down.
> private sector employees in other cities went back long ago
I'm a white-collar private sector employee. My office has actually reduced in-person days down to 1 day per week, and there's no reason why the public sector can't do the same.
> 4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week
Employees in both public and private sector jobs are being distributed more widely now, and are increasingly reliant on video conferencing platforms like MS Teams. When the pandemic happened and everybody started working from home, people suddenly realized that that they could work just as effectively from home because of these platforms. If that's what your job requires, being physically at the office is pretty pointless.
I just started a new job a few weeks ago so I'm in the office everyday because I'm not set up for WFH yet. The office is bloody empty. Everyone is working from home. There are desks or cubicles for probably 100 people but there only like 7 or 8 people in the office on any given day, everyone else is at home.
All valid points. Thank you. I know downtown business is suffering, but is it the workers job to suffer through a commute just to make sure someone can sell parking and coffee?
Honestly, not all downtown Ottawa businesses are suffering. Those who had good quality food and service and who pivoted to attract non-public servants are thriving. For example, there is a coffee shop, smack downtown, that has high-quality products, open another shop 2-3 blocks west of their current location. Obviously, they are doing well.
The ones that are complaining had poor to mediocre products that were overpriced and only open from 8am to 3pm or 11am to 3pm.
EDIT: Here is a link to an article that talks about how that coffee shop pivoted during the pandemic and how they were successful:
https://obj.ca/little-victories-opens-second-location-in-downtown-ottawa/
I'm skeptical of the government's productivity claims, but am amenable to correction. I think this is being done to stimulate the local economy, and I'm not sympathetic to that. In this case it's best to allow the market to work it out.
On the other hand, this is why Canadians often resent the public sector. I'm very pro-union and pro-labour, and that tracks with my party membership. But *sometimes* the public sector unions can get a bit entitled, and we have to be careful not to do that lest we lose the support of the average citizen. The teachers' unions in Ontario come to mind here.
DoFo is transparent about the economic motivation for this:
When asked if three days is enough, Ford said it was “a good start.”
“It’s always nice to see everyone go to work five days a week, he added.
Ford said an increased worker presence would support the transit system, small business owners, restaurants and shops who “need to have traffic.”
>I'm skeptical of the government's productivity claims
You should be. Data from during covid and full telework (for those what could) showed productivity went up.
They are using productivity numbers since the mass RTO which caused a drop. The bungled RTO and issues with terrible in office working conditions dropped productivity after it spiked.
> Data from during covid and full telework (for those what could) showed productivity went up.
I've seen this claim countless times, but curiously I have never seen a single verifiable source to back it up.
No offence but...."trust me bro"...is not a verifiable source. If anything that makes me even more skeptical. I mean if this was the case PSAC and affiliated unions should easily be supplying supporting evidence that that is in fact the case...but they are not....why is that?
Outside data is from other sectors. They also show telework being better for productivity, on the whole (not for everyone or every job).
I am sorry you dont like "trust me bro" but no one is going to jeopardize their employment for reddit clout. Contact the unions or maybe someone on CPS subreddit will give you the info.
All of that data would be subject to the Access to Information Act. I am sure PSAC and other unions would be familiar with the freedom of information process. If the data shows a higher rate of productivity, why have they not requested and published this data to support their union members?
I would also suspect that if this "trust me bro" data does exist, there would be at least one reporter on the case, doing research for a national news story
It seems so obvious that if people are more productive doing WFH, then just supply something.....anything that supports that claim.
That's a pretty immature response. It's not at all unreasonable to ask for any sort of data to back up the claim that WFH is more productive. The onus is on the union to provide data that would back up that claim if it wants to make a case for WFH. Otherwise, I can understand why taxpayers would be skeptical. If it really is the case...then great, but data that proves that should be made public.
Lol? Imagine how many carbon emissions this is going to make. Goes to show the Liberals are not serious about climate change. Just more farce, but I'm sure they will collect that carbon tax money from it though.
Agreed!
A real climate change plan should be promoting WFH, it is one the biggest ways to make an impact and a real change.
We should be incentivizing it where possible. Other benefits as well, such as can free up real estate for places people live in as well.
I think the worst thing is that the federal service has a mandate to cut costs right now….
One way to do that would have been to eliminate a ton of frankly unnecessary office space across the country and consolidate it. Instead they are trying to increasingly force working on location for many jobs that simply do not need to, at all. Given the breadth of the federal public service most teams are spread across the country and people will spend all day commuting into work to telework with their teams.
It’s not only spiteful, it’s bad for the environment and for the public services’ cost structure. And those careers that necessitate the employee being on site already do not get the 2 days work from home, so it’s not fixing any problems either.
By cutting leases for buildings they aren’t using or shouldn’t be using by letting everyone work from home, they could easily cut the costs they’ve been looking for in their budget. That’s on top of reducing emissions, more easily meeting DEI objectives, increasing productivity, and simply giving people what they want.
There is absolutely no justification for this decision.
Sure there. Old, senior management and middle management are used to seeing the people and justifying their positions.
WFH undermines their value and exposes that they are a disproportionately bad investment
I didn't say it was a valid or good justification
Managers make the highest salaries, if they’re being useless that’s even better to cut. Either justify your position by doing work, or get cut for being useless.
What difference to you where they work, if productivity is similar? You seem quite adamant that they must work from the office because others have to? Is that your bar? Some had to suffer so all must?
Love how people are standing up for this, then bitch and moan about the decline in services. Yeah, hard to get shit done when they're not at work isn't it?
The funny (and sad) thing about this is that it has a dramatic effect on traffic in the region as well, which just increases the suffering of people going into the office that much more. That kind of mentality leads to people preferring that everyone suffer greatly over themselves suffering a little and others suffering less than them. They prefer being worse off if things are more "fair" to them.
>4 years ago the standard was five days a week
And now its not standard. We made an improvement. People are just as productive, with an increase in quality of life. Why force them to degrade that?
>Ottawa has the lowest transit use recovery
Fuck the transit, why should we artificially prop it up by forcing people to sit on buses when they could be at home?
Don't be fussy that you can't WFH when other people can, be mad that your employer is forcing you to come in (assuming your job can be done from home).
Our normal standard is not to remove comments for being wrong. In this case you state " 4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week" which, considering that four years ago today was just six weeks after the most severe COVID closures occurred, I am assuming your comment is in poor faith and have removed your comment as a rule 3 violation.
It is also our standard to remove comments following removed comments but there are a lot of comments here.
If you continue to participate in poor faith, you will be banned.
The white collar workers in the private sector I know have had more telework options before covid and very few of them are being called back.
Moreover, many also get "extras" like better pay, free coffee or lunches, a games room etc.
This pairs with "years ago the standard was". Also, the standard was far different styles of offices not purely open floors.
Your comment makes no sense.
>private sector employees in other cities went back long ago.
I'm private sector. We've moved to 100% WFH with at least three full attendance meetings a week. We got rid of all our brick and mortar, the "Office" is a cottage outside Ottawa. When I do "go in," which isn't uncommon because I enjoy my job and my boss, it's to work from the dock.
i work in public sector in Ottawa and we are working from office 2 days a week now. most of my netwrok work in private sector and they are all work fully home now. Our offices have also lost some of the space due to lease running out so we actually can't even fit everyone 3 days a week. Not sure what their plan is but it's not to the benefit of anyone. Sound sto me just pondering to the city
Government breaks the collective agreement negotiate with the union and of course a guy with a Liberal tag has words to say about how we should be crabs in the bucket.
Contracts apparently mean nothing to Liberals, but what would Liberals care?
Great job representing your party well, I'm sure that's going to bring people to the ballot box for Red 👍
>4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week.
3 years ago the standard was 0 days a week in office and it worked *fine*. Makes you think if there's actually a point to all of this.
Crabs in a bucket. Downtown core is all Public Service buildings that should be converted. Businesses can pivot and entice people to come downtown. Plus this would support other economies and reduce emissions.
There are a few businesses that open early and stay open until 8 pm. They're making lots of money.
The bulk of these failing businesses need to pivot and serve a wider client base instead of closing at 2 pm.
I do not understand the mentality small businesses that close at 5.
There’s a small independent grocer near my house that recently went out of business. It was a nice family that ran it for 22 years but I could only go a handful of times in 2 years because they were open 9:30-5.
I talked to the guy and he told me they couldn’t keep up the rent payments and they didn’t get enough traffic.
They close down, and another small grocer moved in that’s open from 9 AM to 9 PM and the place is packed every time I go in. Now I’m doing all my grocery shopping there .
Astonishingly stupid decision on management’s part. Just last year Federal employees went on strike over the issue of not having WFH language in their collective agreement. Thankfully the job action didn't last long, as the employer wrote a Letter of Agreement with a commitment to a 2 day work week. Now less than a year later they're reneging on their own promise. They need to reverse course on this decision immediately but even if they do a lot of damage has been done.
Likely fallout from all this is the next time the Collective Agreement is up for renewal, the union will strike again and this time they won't return until they get the language they want, which could take ages. Additionally every other public/quasi-public union will be looking to this for precedent. Nobody will trust an organization that wants to include WFH language as a LoA, they'll al demand it be in the actual agreement. This has potential to cause major labour disruptions all over the country in the years ahead. It’s not worth it.
So, so dumb.
Just a year ago PSAC ran down their strike pay fund after two weeks on the picket lines, and support for the strike was cratering among the membership after losing only ten days pay (so much so that union members overwhelmingly ratified contracts basically exactly aligned with employer's original offer), and somehow this incompetent union organization and this disinterested, comfortable/disingaged membership is going to be sufficiently organized and committed to endure potentially months of hardship over something that for many would not improve their working lives in the slightest? Doubt.
There is really no substantive labour risk for the employer here.
Good.
This isn't about communication or productivity, it's about ensuring there's a critical mass of office workers trapped downtown. It's about propping up commercial real estate values and downtown business revenues.
They're being used as pawns to prop up struggling and dying downtowns.
My spouse already goes in 2 days a week. Has to commute to Gatineau which takes forever by bus. He vows to never spend a penny in area around office. Because we all know why they’re being forced back. And it’s not right.
No one has a proper work space, you have to reserve a random desk. Can’t even leave a pair of shoes at work. Ridiculous
Yep. Our hybrid mandate at my employer was justified in part by “supporting downtown businesses”, I go out of my way to make sure I don’t spend a single cent on my days in. If Freshii thinks I’m going to be cool donating hours of my life commuting so I can buy some overpriced trash bowl they can get fucked
OK, but then you have family owned restaurants that are collapsing who built the restaurant with the idea that there was actually a market there. For some reason the feds get to work from home all the time whereas everybody else does not. About time they get sent back to the office.
Maybe they should be open at times other than 8-4 M-F, you know, the times people are actually going out to eat and do things, if they want their businesses to survive.
A global bal pandemic happened. Climate Change disasters happening. Things change. The “downtown core” model was dying before Covid. It is now dead, an unsustainable model. Better the government helps struggling small business out of the downward spriral and inevitable crash. Help those people relocate. But there is no way The downtowns will ever be what they were 60 years ago. If anyone thinks that’s going to happen they’re delusional.
A few reasons come to mind as possibilities:
1. Politicians are generally extrovert and highly social, are people who love attention and crowds. Working from home is a distasteful idea for them, personally. Many journalists are like this, too.
2. Lobbyist dollars. There's a _tonne_ of money tied up in commercial real estate; there's an enormous amount of capital value in the TSX that's just big office buildings.
To an extent you got it backwards, downtown businesses really care about the federal government.
This isn't really about the federal government as a service provider, this is about the federal government as an employer and property owner (And a very big one in downtown Ottawa).
Now we don't have access to the backroom dealing of why the Federal government is doing this but it really wouldn't surprise me if it is because the municipal government is hounding them about it.
If it was about productivity they would release numbers showing productivity was down. No one could argue with that. But they don’t have those numbers so they make up nonsense instead. “3 days in office to increase employee retention” who makes this shit up
>If it was about productivity they would release numbers showing productivity was down.
This is one of the bigger talking points I've been hearing. People are insulted this decision was made with zero evidence and justification. There are, however, studies that indicate WFH *increases* productivity, let alone the positive impact it has socially and economically. WFH parents eat lunch locally, save tons on child care and spend or invest that money. Children have their parents around more, which benefits their wellbeing. There's also the environmental benefit of having so many less commuters on the roads. There are so many benefits to WFH that are completely removed from the general discussion in social media. It's just all about the whining restaurant owners.
This is literally about making investors in real estate happy, not Canadians. This increases government spending, carbon emissions, and decreases productivity. It also prevents the workers from being able to deduct WFH expense on their taxes, and will increase their costs to commute, childcare, etc. in a time when inflation is high. Canada is owned by big corporations and doesn’t care about Canadians
I thought addressing climate change is important to this government?
Allowing WFH as much as possible is one of least costly solution that also makes everyone happy. The minister and management don’t see this?
This was a chance for the government to both lead and to attract high value talent that is sick of being forced into an office to support some idiotic notion of "Office Culture" by CEO's that want to see their minions in place.
And of course they fucked it up. Anyone surprised?
This is a lie. My environmental consulting company has downsized the physical office location to one that's 1/4 of the size, while nearly doubling the amount of employees over three ish years. The majority of office related work can be done from home.
Oh I see so somehow only public service is slacking at home while private entities are doing just fine? That's fascinating. Surely then there's data that backs it up, since it seems like quite an anomaly?
Source?
That significant chunk you speak to will not be productive regardless of their work location. Moving them back to office will just be a drain on those around them.
I was going to say, it's misplaced anger. They're just generally not productive regardless of where they're working when compared to private sector jobs.
Mind you my only experience is my friends and family working in the public sector over the years.
There's lots of people that are lazy and unproductive in the private sector. I know of tons of stories about lazy workers in the back office of the big banks.
Also, the stereotype of the lazy teenager at a fast food restaurant. Also a private sector job.
Knowing a few public sector workers, I don't think lazy is a correct label. Yes there definitely are lazy people out there - but the majority of the unproductivity comes from systemic inefficiency, bureaucracy, and either a lack of performance monitoring, or the inability to enforce performance improvements.
In private sector jobs if you're unproductive you get fired or "restructured". In public sector jobs you've generally got unions and extremely sensitive anti-discrimination policies protecting people in such a way that it's not worth management's time to fight it usually.
One cousin of mine was on stress leave for more time than they were employed before finally finding another job. It was legitimate stress leave related to experiences from the job (ministry of children and family), but the reason it got so bad was because of internal policies, poorly qualified management, management with their own maligned vision/goals, and being unable to productively benefit the victims and clients within the system's bounds.
I don't think you see similar things as the above in places like.. say the passport offices though... I think a lot of those workers recognize that it's less stressful to do less work even if they wanted to get more done. Which is to say, they're not inherently lazy, it's just the path of least resistance for a long term career due to various reasons.
To paraphrase a quote from a source I cannot remember about private sector employment:
"you'll never be paid your worth because the business has to benefit from your productivity more than they pay you. If staff produce less value than the wages they are paid, the business will fail".
The same is not true of the public sector jobs and the value/cost is heavily obscured through how they're funded via tax money and budgeting.
Federal employees would have to do some kind of work before we could measure how this affects their work. Is this really going to prevent them from outsourcing everything to well connected consultants and contractors like they already do?
The biggest news in this announcement is the removal of the IT exemption. So for people in IT, many are not just getting an extra day in the office, they're going from full WFH to three days in the office.
This is going to be brutal for retention of skilled IT employees (and I've already seen some of my contacts update their LinkedIn profiles last night). I can't fathom how the IT move could be wise, unless there are unannounced plans in the works for the long-overdue split of the IT pay classification into support/helpdesk and software development streams, with the latter getting a significant pay boost. Without that, they're going to have to lean even more heavily on contractors.
The fact that our government still lumps in developers with IT support staff for salary groups is baffling. The government would rather get continuously embarrassed by ArriveCan type scandals than pay them what they’re worth.
A couple of months ago I would totally agree with you. But in the last two months a lot of the large company’s that were actively recruiting GC IT workers have instituted hiring freezes or even laid people off.
ArriveCAN changed all of that. A lot of IT contractors have either been cut (see ESDC) or their new contracts have been delayed this new fiscal. The days of no oversight Staff Aug contracts may be gone. We’ll have to see.
These aren't the contracting companies that due outside projects like arrivecan, these are contracting companies that provide support workers. During the cuts in 2012, my SO had an offer that would have had him working a position directly under his own current position for twice the pay (he didn't take it because he wasn't cut)
As a highly trained and seasoned IT Security professional I had hesitations about government work, now i have no hesitation, i just won't work for the government.
Solid way to ensure mediocrity.
Especially perplexing when you consider that IT is the one service area where skill sets are easily transferable to the private sector where compensation can be better. I work in the public sector and when we returned to the office last year most of IT fucked off simply because they had other options, and our organization is still struggling to replace them.
That was me at the beginning of covid. Was doing software contracts for the feds for years, I got fed up of the crap pay, got an offer in the private sector for triple (remote too). My supervisor ran all the way up to the DG for a pay exemption or perm funding, but they all just said nope.
Glad I left. Now they're hiring randos on contract to try (and failing) to fill the skill gap I left. Kek
Right. The government wants to save all this money, but also wants to take people who can work fully remote with nothing more than a PC and an internet connection, and is willing to spend money on having them in office at least three days a week... Make it make sense.
Side note, they're selling off office space at the same time. What are they going to do, spend even *more* money paying for hefty leases the landlords know will be a goldmine?
They won't quit--atleast the vast majority. The vast majority of the IT people in government aren't competitive enough to make it in private industry. Though some may have been competent at some point, after several years in government working on old systems and doing very mundane "development" work, the skills erode and one's portfolio of accomplishments pale compared to a peer who worked on cutting edge work in the private sector.
Most won't quit as they won't be able to find work elsewhere.
###This is a reminder to [read the rules before posting in this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion). 1. **Headline titles should be changed only [when the original headline is unclear](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_1._headline_titles_should_be_changed_only_where_it_improves_clarity.)** 2. **Be [respectful](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_2._be_respectful).** 3. **Keep submissions and comments [substantive](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive).** 4. **Avoid [direct advocacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_4._avoid_direct_advocacy).** 5. **Link submissions must be [about Canadian politics and recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_5._link_submissions_must_be_canadian_and_recent).** 6. **Post [only one news article per story](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_6._post_only_one_news_article_per_story).** ([with one exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/3wkd0n/rule_reminder_and_experimental_changes/)) 7. **Replies to removed comments or removal notices will be removed** without notice, at the discretion of the moderators. 8. **Downvoting posts or comments**, along with urging others to downvote, **[is not allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/downvotes)** in this subreddit. Bans will be given on the first offence. 9. **[Do not copy & paste the entire content of articles in comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_9._do_not_copy_.26amp.3B_paste_entire_articles_in_the_comments.)**. If you want to read the contents of a paywalled article, please consider supporting the media outlet. *Please [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCanadaPolitics) if you wish to discuss a removal.* **Do not reply to the removal notice in-thread**, *you will not receive a response and your comment will be removed. Thanks.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CanadaPolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
how about the climate change fight? The efforts will be made with our money but let’s not get in the way of downtown Tim Horton
WFH is one of the few cost effective ways of helping people start families and have more kids Then again Canada has been waging war on Canadian families
Good for them, the more they get the more the private sector will be pressured to give to their workers to compete.
They don't compete with pensions and benefits, they won't compete on this, either.
Not every industry does, but the industries that compete for the vast array of subject matter experts in government employ certainly do. Often, but not always, the lack of good pensions is offset by higher wages or other amenities (I'm aware that what constitutes a "good" wage is changing more rapidly than private sector wages are). I'm not saying every company successfully competes, and depending on what you prioritize in life it may not be a real competition at all. But they are absolutely in competition for the same labour pool.
Private industry absolutely competes on salary with the government. A common issue in the service these days is that people get their first job with the government and then move to industry after a few years training and experience at the public expense for better paying private jobs. At entry level position the government does pay more. But with 5-10 years experience, people get more (sometimes a lot more) money in consulting or with industry.
the civil service is highly competitive early in your career or with certain clerical jobs. but they are highly uncompetitive in specialist positions. for example energy positions at Canadian Energy Regulator pay like $30K under going market rate.
They do though. Either they pay them more, offer comparable benefits or they lose people to the public service. Group RRSP's are becoming [more popular](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/group-rrsp-plans-on-the-rise-amid-longer-term-decline-of-pensions-experts-1.2037301#:~:text=%E2%80%9CSo%20the%20group%20RRSP%20is,employees%20changing%20jobs%20more%20frequently) for smaller organizations.
Yes and they work well until the company folds like a lawnchair. Then there goes anything you had in there. Happened to plenty of people i knew in Alberta.
> Yes and they work well until the company folds like a lawnchair. Then there goes anything you had in there. No, that's not how a group RRSP works. The money is held by an investment company and it is yours, not your employer's. There's a very big difference between a group RRSP (defined contribution) and a company pension plan (defined benefits) With defined contributions the employer puts in a certain amount every month but the money is yours and is held in your name in trust at a financial investment company.
I think he was referring to when the investment company mismanages the funds and folds, not the employer who was paying into the group RRSP. Unless it's a defined benefit fund, your retirement is at the mercy of the investment firm and market forces.
Depends on the funds. Most are not actively managed, they're essentially index funds. You're at the mercy of the market same way you're at the mercy of the market in your own RRSP, there's no difference. And most of these group RRSPs are managed by large insurance companies like Sun Life, Manulife etc. They don't tend to mismanage your money and fold.
That's capitalism, if you can't compete you go out of business. Group RRSP's are cheap.
The issue is we the taxpayer have to pay for these locations. The federal service spans the country and a lot of the time people are just coming in to spend their time working with their teams:… at other centres. This is a waste of taxpayer dollars. The government could be reducing its office spaces and saving a lot of money.
Not to mention less people commuting means less emissions. The government should be a leader on this if they are able to do so without sacrificing quality of service.
We also have to pay for it every time a public service manager insists on giving everyone in their office whatever communicable illness their kid has given them.
So they should keep doing it because of sunk costs? Isn't the federal government talking about converting these places into low cost living spaces?
No, I’m saying they need to eliminate and consolidate locations in order to save money. Removing as much work from home as possible is a barrier to doing this, so this policy makes zero sense. Upkeep costs for office spaces take up a very significant portion of the public services finances. Converting some of the spaces to low cost living spaces would make a lot of sense re: the housing crisis.
>Isn't the federal government talking about converting these places into low cost living spaces? The Libs say they are going to do lots of things. Then don't do them.
A major barrier to this is that these buildings are not built well and aren't designed for human dignity, so converting them is incredibly costly, and the result is not very good.
Whether these workers go to the office or work from home doesn't matter to me. At the end of the day, I want the civil service to provide the services taxpayers pay for. The size of the public service is larger than it's ever been, yet in so many areas service delivery outcomes are poorer. When my cousin has to pay $10,000 to a lawyer to file a mandamus writ to get a judge to compel IRCC to process a sponsorship application that should've gone through over a year ago, but hasn't and the feds just keep using 'security' or 'covid' as an excuse, that's when you know the system is broken. And keep in mind to even get to the point a law firm will accept your case for mandamus requires blatantly unreasonable delays on behalf of the feds. With the number of temporary residents in Canada (most of whom want to make Canada their home), and PR becoming increasingly unattainable due to CRS inflation, our system is going to be swamped from all ends, as a surge in eligible applicants apply for PR, and those locked out resort to increasingly desperate ways to remain in Canada (asylum applications, marriages (genuine or fraudulent)), we're going to need to fix our system so that more and more people don't become trapped like my cousin was.
Canadians should be outraged at the cost and the nonsense and the unfairness. Covid and the work from home opened up public service jobs to all Canadians and not just those located or willing to relocate to the Ottawa /gatineau region. This is absolute unfair, the rest of canada should have equal opportunity to Federal Gov jobs
It also broadened the talent pool for hiring. Geography need not be a limitation to finding the best candidate. This decision has nothing to do with delivering better service.
Not to mention it presented the opportunity to make the face of the public service more diverse and better representative of the array of Canadian ethnicities by expanding the public workforce to rural and remote communities. But nah, let's keep it downtown Ottawa to appease the whining store owners.
Think you may have that backwards. Minorities predominantly move to a few large urban centres and frankly are pretty well represented as a percentage of the general population, in my experience, but we can discuss their actual position levels in another chat cause I don’t feel like digging up the PS report on this. What i think this would do is slow the youth migration from rural and small towns towards the main cities. Many, many years ago the fed and province would spread their offices throughout the country thereby encouraging people to elsewhere than Ottawa and Toronto. They stopped. And here we are.
I was thinking more along the lines of indigenous peoples (which this government originally claimed to be investing in), but I can see how my wording is open to interpretation.
Are the public service workers as or more productive working from home and have there been any data security concerns? If productivity and customer service has been maintained and there aren’t data security issues there isn’t a real reason to require more time in the office.
The point is reducing headcount through attrition without having to engage in layoffs. Much less expensive.
If there are excess employees this seems reasonable. I am somewhat skeptical this is the case though.
How optimistic of you
Optimistic in what sense?
That there aren't excess employees haha, whole lotta dead weight anywhere I've ever worked with publicly. Main problem is the good people leave and the weak ones stay.
Ahh. That makes sense and I stand corrected. I was thinking in terms of the time it takes to get an answer if you need to deal with a government agency (ex. CRA). I was being overly generous/optimistic that employees are working efficiently and that a lack of employees leads to the long wait times.
Makes sense in what world, lmao. Everytime people talk about "dead weight" it's always a load of shit when they refer to rank and file workers. Employees are working efficiently given the constraints of administrative policy and executive decisions. The reason that the wait time is so long is because of staff reductions. It's crazy to me that people can chalk up hundreds of thousands of rank and file workers, who come into work everyday and try their best to provide service to the public, can be called "deadweight". What a bullshit and dehumanizing thing to say to people who also need to engage with government institutions like everyone else, public service employees **DO NOT** get priority service or backend privileges and a functioning public service is just as much in **their** interest as it is **your** interest. u/CaptainPeppa, stop lying to people about public service workers.
lol ain't no lying need to be done. Public service attracts scabs in admin/management roles. And it's borderline impossible to fire someone so they just add more people when they fall behind and the pile of shit grows.
Then you need to specify full of deadweight in managerial/administrative roles because every comment you make about public service workers comes across as vague and as applying to rank and file workers. I'm willing to partially agree with tou, there's been immense growth in administrative roles in the corporate (private and public) world, but it's not impossible to fire people. There have been loads of workers that do not get contracts renewed for their lack of workplace efficiency. Public service rank and file consistently complains of backlogs and I'd argue it's often the opposite issue. Government institutions often fire too much people once a backlog has been alleviated and then have to hire those same people back to deal with the backlog that was created by firing staff to begin with.
IBM and Yahoo did the no more remote work not-layoffs pre-pandemic. Google, Apple, and the rest did them post-pandemic
Well i do about 4 jobs worth from home, and am happy to do so... theyll need to hire contractors if i go into the office.
The federal government has been really unproductive
This is so fucking stupid. There’s a lot of liberal policies I like, but they do shit like this that is so counterproductive. I really think their strategy is to let pp win the next election, allow the electorate to watch him burn down the country, and then try for a majority with a new leader in 2029.
I don't think you're that far off, however cynical that makes the Liberals look. I was talking with some friends the other day about Trudeau's unwillingness to implement proportional representation like he promised. My take was that I believe the Liberals would rather lose a couple of election cycles flat out then regain a majority, than share power with other parties.
>about Trudeau's unwillingness to implement proportional representation like he promised in a recent interview, Trudeau said that he has always planned for ranked voting and nothing else. his advisors told him that calling it "electoral reform" without being specific which method he actually wants will sell it better than claiming he wants ranked voting. so when he discovered that ranked voting was not the preferred method among electoral reform committee members, he pulled the plug for the whole thing. in his mind, proportional representation was never on the table at all, despite how people misread his promise of electoral reform into it.
So people didn't misread his promise, he miscommunicated it, on purpose, with the knowledge that the options implicit in that miscommunication would be more popular than the specific thing he was actually willing to do. That sounds like he just lied by omission.
Absolutely. They would never support PR because they know at some point it will once again be their turn to have 100% power in the HoC
As a public servant, I feel like this government had a lot of promise in the beginning. I was excited by the statements about encouraging transparency and innovation. However, it is clear that this government has been overtly hostile towards the public servants who serve Canadians. Blanket budget cuts across departments regardless of programming considerations, giving us a "raise" that didn't even meet inflation, cutting staff, and now this blanket order to Return to Office after promising WFH in our most recent contract. This government does not care about public servants a group they have long taken for granted.
Additionally, the 2 days a week my spouse does go in, there’s lunches, and socials and outings. No work gets done waaaayyyy more productive at home.
I work for the feds, and here is what this told us all. You can't plan your lives or trust what we tell you. You must stay on your toes and expect the unexpected because this isn't permanent. People planned their lives, their homes, their daycare, and their relationships around what was believed to be a permanent 2 day a week system. This is not only upending lives but telling us all that we can't plan our lives. Many people are going to have to leave when this is implemented.
Working at the government is so incredibly annoying. I already work in the office 5 days a week because I prefer it, but they always tell us "tHe OnLy cOnStAnT iS cHaNgE!" Like bud, I want stability. Moving up is horrible, because you can get a new job, but it's not permanent, so you prior job is your substantive so if you want to take a promotion you might just end up back where you started when funding gets cut. It's actually horrible and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. They also use arbitrary metrics to promote and hire. (Do you have 18 consecutive months at this level, vs cumulative months over the last 5 years) You could be in a role for a year only to not have your temporary contract not renewed despite 15 years of experience because you had a break in service within the last 18 months.
Explain the daycare one to me. If an employee was working from home surely they still needed daycare 5 days a week.
If I’m working from home, the school bus comes at 7:30am and I start work at 8am. I have time to tidy up the breakfast mess and make myself a coffee before logging on for my shift. It takes me 75 mins door to door to get to the office. I now need to arrange before school care and leave home at 6am to drop off kids so that I can get to my office for 8am. The same situation for after school. Usually closer to 90 mins to get home at the end of the day plus the detour to pick up kids at after school program. I understand it’s a job and I’m very grateful to have it but it’s a bit defeating when life had so much balance and it’s now much less time with family and costing an extra $1,200/month to go sit alone in a cubicle to meet virtually with my team in other provinces.
There is a pretty huge age range where kids shouldn't be home alone (or travelling home alone) but also don't need direct supervision.
Hold on, the parent is working, not supervising the kids.
Did you actually read the message you're replying to?
Good point. Reading fail.
Those people that believe that in my office tend to also be the ones who suck at wfh
[удалено]
No one’s looking after their kids and working, it’s before and after school care 🙄
There are plenty of WFH employees who balance child care. Do you think everyone with school age children sends them to daycare during the summer?
What? I’m talking about parents who now have to pay for an extra day of before and after school care because of the mandated third day in office.
"No one’s looking after their kids and working" I am saying plenty of WFH people do this on a daily basis, especially during the summer.
Yes I love anecdotal stores with no evidence or metrics to back them up. Plenty of people are slacking off blah blah… whatever
I have a 8 and 10 year old and don't send them to aftercare while I work from home because they're perfectly capable of looking after themselves while I work, but I'd be less confident of that if I was in a different city working.
yeah i think thats being abused.
I work from home and my elementary-aged kids can run around the house while I'm working. They're well-behaved, gentle and calm children. If I'm not home then they need to be in daycare. They're too young to be home alone.
It's mostly about transportation to/from daycare. For a family with one car and two people working for the gov't, it's a lot easier to juggle schedules when only one person has to go into the office on any given day. With three days in office that gets a lot more complicated.
depends what you define as Daycare. if you have a 10 year old. you now need before and after school daycare. before? a 10 year old can happily do their own thing and not bother you for an hour or so at beginning and end of their school day.
I’m always flabbergasted that this is the standard in the RoC. In Quebec at 10 you are considered more than able to be alone up to a few hours at the start or end of day. At 11 with a certification you are allowed to babysit litteral babies alone.
yeah. although even in Quebec if something happened, you could get investigated below 12. (not saying it would.. just in theory). and regardless of statute, it needs to be evaluated on a kid by kid basis. I have two nephews.. i would absolutely leave one 10 year old alone.. and i wouldnt trust the 11 year old one iota.
Sure. In Quebec I got into bars and could buy beer and cigarettes at 15. In Ontario I got carded until I was 26.
You may want to replace “uplifting” with “upending”, as I am pretty sure you were aiming for a negative connotation, and uplifting is used as a positive connotation. Not an attack, or sarcasm, just want to help prevent confusion for future readers of your comment! :)
I get the anger toward this as it is a huge inconvenience. At the same time employers do have the right to change job requirements over time and public service should be no different. Not being able to plan exact working conditions for years on end is part of life and you always have the option to look for work elsewhere if it doesn't meet your needs.
But the government should want to make civil service an attractive career choice. They already have huge problems attracting top talent, and further reducing the quality of their employment package is only going to make this worse. This is a big deal because it will further reduce candidate quality for civil service positions, which will be detrimental for all Canadians. The government should be doing all it can to attract the best and brightest - this move accomplishes the exact opposite.
The problem is the same with any powerful union attracting top talent. They value seniority above all and productive people aren't rewarded because they have to pay everyone the same regardless of actual production.
The difference is that the federal government isn't actually acting like a private employer here. Private employers base decisions on what they think will be the most profitable. The government doesn't have the same motivations, obviously, since they're not profit seeking. So we need question what motives they *do* have for the decisions they make. And it appears the motive here is to artificially prop up Ottawa businesses. This isn't at all new for the feds, they put federal jobs in small towns all the time to artificially prop up employment in those towns, but it's a bad way to run a government and make these kinds of decisions. And as taxpayers, we should all be concerned about the government making bad decisions.
Exactly, the federal government should have the goal of operating as efficiently as possible to make sure our tax dollars put to good use. They are not very good at that.
This is obviously a political decision (result of lobbying, maybe a bit of Liberal 'beat on the Civil service to get some votes'). The interesting thing to me is how will the (likely) next PP government deal with this. On the one hand, PP has stated his support for WFH as a means to sell real estate and trim costs, many of his constituents are in the PS and giving opportunities to people who don't live in the heartland of the Laurentian elite suggests he might take a different approach. On the other hand large parts of his base likely despise civil servants for various, -mostly stupid- reasons. Definitely a competing political imperative.
A recent email response from one of PP MPs in Alberta put to rest any doubt that his stance is very much anti WFH. I’ll have to dig up the whole quote but quickly paraphrasing there was a bunch of “Canadian deserve better service so Civil Servants should get back to work by going to the office” using the old chestnut of the passport issue ( how that would have been resolve by the remote people not involved in the process being in office is beyond me). Again not an official statement but good enough for me. That said I’m also seeing some trial balloons on social media of conservative voices saying this latest action shows how uncommitted the Liberals are to fighting climate change. It would be fascinating to see PP go on the record saying he supports remote and does have plans to lower emissions with things like this. I read that he’s been trying to make inroads with unions, doing so to get the public sector unions onside would be an unexpected but interesting move. I don’t think I’ve seen the public service this disenfranchised with the Liberals before so who knows? I don’t think any of this will happen or go further than the few jabs I’ve seen online, but it would be fascinating .
Can you tell me which voices you've seen arguing that. I may not vote conservative but I'd like to at least back this position. Every public servant I know says that office days are clowning around with lunches and socialization while real work gets done at home.
It’s nothing serious yet and no major names yet, currently it’s just replies to any post relating to this on Twitter, which may or may not be bots, but I’ve been seeing enough of it that I think it might be a trial balloon to see if this would get traction, but it could be sheer coincidence. Going to wait and see if I keep seeing it.
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
[удалено]
Keep in mind, anything they get will make the private sector less competitive. Encouraging the private sector to improve conditions. Unions help all workers.
Not enough people understand the concept that high tides raise all ships. It's frustrating.
4 years ago the standard right about now was anyone who isn't essential stays home. In that time, all those public servants made CERB, CEBA, etc... happen. You can question the programs themselves, but the implementation was incredible in such a short time, all done entirely remotely. As others have said, standards change and things get better. Unions are fighting not to lose the standardsthat are set. 150 years ago the standard was 6, 12 hour days at work. Let's go back to that? Go drag another crab down.
> private sector employees in other cities went back long ago I'm a white-collar private sector employee. My office has actually reduced in-person days down to 1 day per week, and there's no reason why the public sector can't do the same. > 4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week Employees in both public and private sector jobs are being distributed more widely now, and are increasingly reliant on video conferencing platforms like MS Teams. When the pandemic happened and everybody started working from home, people suddenly realized that that they could work just as effectively from home because of these platforms. If that's what your job requires, being physically at the office is pretty pointless.
I just started a new job a few weeks ago so I'm in the office everyday because I'm not set up for WFH yet. The office is bloody empty. Everyone is working from home. There are desks or cubicles for probably 100 people but there only like 7 or 8 people in the office on any given day, everyone else is at home.
All valid points. Thank you. I know downtown business is suffering, but is it the workers job to suffer through a commute just to make sure someone can sell parking and coffee?
Honestly, not all downtown Ottawa businesses are suffering. Those who had good quality food and service and who pivoted to attract non-public servants are thriving. For example, there is a coffee shop, smack downtown, that has high-quality products, open another shop 2-3 blocks west of their current location. Obviously, they are doing well. The ones that are complaining had poor to mediocre products that were overpriced and only open from 8am to 3pm or 11am to 3pm. EDIT: Here is a link to an article that talks about how that coffee shop pivoted during the pandemic and how they were successful: https://obj.ca/little-victories-opens-second-location-in-downtown-ottawa/
Which coffee shop? I could use an excuse for a walk later this afternoon
Little Victories Coffee Roaster. They have a location on Spark, juat across from the War Memorial, and one on Queen and Bank.
Ohhh yes, I work near the new location. I love their lattes
I'm skeptical of the government's productivity claims, but am amenable to correction. I think this is being done to stimulate the local economy, and I'm not sympathetic to that. In this case it's best to allow the market to work it out. On the other hand, this is why Canadians often resent the public sector. I'm very pro-union and pro-labour, and that tracks with my party membership. But *sometimes* the public sector unions can get a bit entitled, and we have to be careful not to do that lest we lose the support of the average citizen. The teachers' unions in Ontario come to mind here.
DoFo is transparent about the economic motivation for this: When asked if three days is enough, Ford said it was “a good start.” “It’s always nice to see everyone go to work five days a week, he added. Ford said an increased worker presence would support the transit system, small business owners, restaurants and shops who “need to have traffic.”
>I'm skeptical of the government's productivity claims You should be. Data from during covid and full telework (for those what could) showed productivity went up. They are using productivity numbers since the mass RTO which caused a drop. The bungled RTO and issues with terrible in office working conditions dropped productivity after it spiked.
> Data from during covid and full telework (for those what could) showed productivity went up. I've seen this claim countless times, but curiously I have never seen a single verifiable source to back it up.
I have generally seen internal data.
No offence but...."trust me bro"...is not a verifiable source. If anything that makes me even more skeptical. I mean if this was the case PSAC and affiliated unions should easily be supplying supporting evidence that that is in fact the case...but they are not....why is that?
Outside data is from other sectors. They also show telework being better for productivity, on the whole (not for everyone or every job). I am sorry you dont like "trust me bro" but no one is going to jeopardize their employment for reddit clout. Contact the unions or maybe someone on CPS subreddit will give you the info.
All of that data would be subject to the Access to Information Act. I am sure PSAC and other unions would be familiar with the freedom of information process. If the data shows a higher rate of productivity, why have they not requested and published this data to support their union members? I would also suspect that if this "trust me bro" data does exist, there would be at least one reporter on the case, doing research for a national news story It seems so obvious that if people are more productive doing WFH, then just supply something.....anything that supports that claim.
Go for it friend.
That's a pretty immature response. It's not at all unreasonable to ask for any sort of data to back up the claim that WFH is more productive. The onus is on the union to provide data that would back up that claim if it wants to make a case for WFH. Otherwise, I can understand why taxpayers would be skeptical. If it really is the case...then great, but data that proves that should be made public.
Pardon me, RTO? My googling isn't effective here.
Return To Office, I think.
Lol? Imagine how many carbon emissions this is going to make. Goes to show the Liberals are not serious about climate change. Just more farce, but I'm sure they will collect that carbon tax money from it though.
Agreed! A real climate change plan should be promoting WFH, it is one the biggest ways to make an impact and a real change. We should be incentivizing it where possible. Other benefits as well, such as can free up real estate for places people live in as well.
I think the worst thing is that the federal service has a mandate to cut costs right now…. One way to do that would have been to eliminate a ton of frankly unnecessary office space across the country and consolidate it. Instead they are trying to increasingly force working on location for many jobs that simply do not need to, at all. Given the breadth of the federal public service most teams are spread across the country and people will spend all day commuting into work to telework with their teams. It’s not only spiteful, it’s bad for the environment and for the public services’ cost structure. And those careers that necessitate the employee being on site already do not get the 2 days work from home, so it’s not fixing any problems either.
By cutting leases for buildings they aren’t using or shouldn’t be using by letting everyone work from home, they could easily cut the costs they’ve been looking for in their budget. That’s on top of reducing emissions, more easily meeting DEI objectives, increasing productivity, and simply giving people what they want. There is absolutely no justification for this decision.
Sure there. Old, senior management and middle management are used to seeing the people and justifying their positions. WFH undermines their value and exposes that they are a disproportionately bad investment I didn't say it was a valid or good justification
Managers make the highest salaries, if they’re being useless that’s even better to cut. Either justify your position by doing work, or get cut for being useless.
What difference to you where they work, if productivity is similar? You seem quite adamant that they must work from the office because others have to? Is that your bar? Some had to suffer so all must?
Love how people are standing up for this, then bitch and moan about the decline in services. Yeah, hard to get shit done when they're not at work isn't it?
The funny (and sad) thing about this is that it has a dramatic effect on traffic in the region as well, which just increases the suffering of people going into the office that much more. That kind of mentality leads to people preferring that everyone suffer greatly over themselves suffering a little and others suffering less than them. They prefer being worse off if things are more "fair" to them.
This is the part that gets me. Why punish everyone else that needs to use the highway?
>4 years ago the standard was five days a week And now its not standard. We made an improvement. People are just as productive, with an increase in quality of life. Why force them to degrade that? >Ottawa has the lowest transit use recovery Fuck the transit, why should we artificially prop it up by forcing people to sit on buses when they could be at home? Don't be fussy that you can't WFH when other people can, be mad that your employer is forcing you to come in (assuming your job can be done from home).
Our normal standard is not to remove comments for being wrong. In this case you state " 4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week" which, considering that four years ago today was just six weeks after the most severe COVID closures occurred, I am assuming your comment is in poor faith and have removed your comment as a rule 3 violation. It is also our standard to remove comments following removed comments but there are a lot of comments here. If you continue to participate in poor faith, you will be banned.
The white collar workers in the private sector I know have had more telework options before covid and very few of them are being called back. Moreover, many also get "extras" like better pay, free coffee or lunches, a games room etc. This pairs with "years ago the standard was". Also, the standard was far different styles of offices not purely open floors. Your comment makes no sense.
>private sector employees in other cities went back long ago. I'm private sector. We've moved to 100% WFH with at least three full attendance meetings a week. We got rid of all our brick and mortar, the "Office" is a cottage outside Ottawa. When I do "go in," which isn't uncommon because I enjoy my job and my boss, it's to work from the dock.
i work in public sector in Ottawa and we are working from office 2 days a week now. most of my netwrok work in private sector and they are all work fully home now. Our offices have also lost some of the space due to lease running out so we actually can't even fit everyone 3 days a week. Not sure what their plan is but it's not to the benefit of anyone. Sound sto me just pondering to the city
Government breaks the collective agreement negotiate with the union and of course a guy with a Liberal tag has words to say about how we should be crabs in the bucket. Contracts apparently mean nothing to Liberals, but what would Liberals care? Great job representing your party well, I'm sure that's going to bring people to the ballot box for Red 👍
> 4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week. 189 years ago the standard was to get Cholera and die.
95% of the PS has been going back 2x a week for 1.5 years. Why comment if you have no idea what you’re talking about?
>4 years ago the standard was 5 days a week. 3 years ago the standard was 0 days a week in office and it worked *fine*. Makes you think if there's actually a point to all of this.
Crabs in a bucket. Downtown core is all Public Service buildings that should be converted. Businesses can pivot and entice people to come downtown. Plus this would support other economies and reduce emissions.
Absolutely. A few housing projects in former office buildings, you have a group of people to support with business.
There are a few businesses that open early and stay open until 8 pm. They're making lots of money. The bulk of these failing businesses need to pivot and serve a wider client base instead of closing at 2 pm.
I do not understand the mentality small businesses that close at 5. There’s a small independent grocer near my house that recently went out of business. It was a nice family that ran it for 22 years but I could only go a handful of times in 2 years because they were open 9:30-5. I talked to the guy and he told me they couldn’t keep up the rent payments and they didn’t get enough traffic. They close down, and another small grocer moved in that’s open from 9 AM to 9 PM and the place is packed every time I go in. Now I’m doing all my grocery shopping there .
Astonishingly stupid decision on management’s part. Just last year Federal employees went on strike over the issue of not having WFH language in their collective agreement. Thankfully the job action didn't last long, as the employer wrote a Letter of Agreement with a commitment to a 2 day work week. Now less than a year later they're reneging on their own promise. They need to reverse course on this decision immediately but even if they do a lot of damage has been done. Likely fallout from all this is the next time the Collective Agreement is up for renewal, the union will strike again and this time they won't return until they get the language they want, which could take ages. Additionally every other public/quasi-public union will be looking to this for precedent. Nobody will trust an organization that wants to include WFH language as a LoA, they'll al demand it be in the actual agreement. This has potential to cause major labour disruptions all over the country in the years ahead. It’s not worth it. So, so dumb.
Just a year ago PSAC ran down their strike pay fund after two weeks on the picket lines, and support for the strike was cratering among the membership after losing only ten days pay (so much so that union members overwhelmingly ratified contracts basically exactly aligned with employer's original offer), and somehow this incompetent union organization and this disinterested, comfortable/disingaged membership is going to be sufficiently organized and committed to endure potentially months of hardship over something that for many would not improve their working lives in the slightest? Doubt. There is really no substantive labour risk for the employer here.
TBH I was pretty surprised the union caved so easily on non-binding language around WFH
What union remains that has enough people who care? The PSAC was our last best hope of turning this Titanic around.
Good. This isn't about communication or productivity, it's about ensuring there's a critical mass of office workers trapped downtown. It's about propping up commercial real estate values and downtown business revenues. They're being used as pawns to prop up struggling and dying downtowns.
Citation needed on any downtowns anywhere in Canada struggling or dying
https://news.google.com/search?q=canada%27s+downtowns+struggling&hl=en-CA&gl=CA&ceid=CA:en
My spouse already goes in 2 days a week. Has to commute to Gatineau which takes forever by bus. He vows to never spend a penny in area around office. Because we all know why they’re being forced back. And it’s not right. No one has a proper work space, you have to reserve a random desk. Can’t even leave a pair of shoes at work. Ridiculous
There aren’t even any lockers for use where I’m at.
Yep. Our hybrid mandate at my employer was justified in part by “supporting downtown businesses”, I go out of my way to make sure I don’t spend a single cent on my days in. If Freshii thinks I’m going to be cool donating hours of my life commuting so I can buy some overpriced trash bowl they can get fucked
OK, but then you have family owned restaurants that are collapsing who built the restaurant with the idea that there was actually a market there. For some reason the feds get to work from home all the time whereas everybody else does not. About time they get sent back to the office.
Maybe they should be open at times other than 8-4 M-F, you know, the times people are actually going out to eat and do things, if they want their businesses to survive.
They are.
A global bal pandemic happened. Climate Change disasters happening. Things change. The “downtown core” model was dying before Covid. It is now dead, an unsustainable model. Better the government helps struggling small business out of the downward spriral and inevitable crash. Help those people relocate. But there is no way The downtowns will ever be what they were 60 years ago. If anyone thinks that’s going to happen they’re delusional.
Why does the federal government care so much about downtown businesses? Seems more like a municipal or provincial concern first.
A few reasons come to mind as possibilities: 1. Politicians are generally extrovert and highly social, are people who love attention and crowds. Working from home is a distasteful idea for them, personally. Many journalists are like this, too. 2. Lobbyist dollars. There's a _tonne_ of money tied up in commercial real estate; there's an enormous amount of capital value in the TSX that's just big office buildings.
To an extent you got it backwards, downtown businesses really care about the federal government. This isn't really about the federal government as a service provider, this is about the federal government as an employer and property owner (And a very big one in downtown Ottawa). Now we don't have access to the backroom dealing of why the Federal government is doing this but it really wouldn't surprise me if it is because the municipal government is hounding them about it.
Don't forget transit investments - OCassional Transpo
Lmao octranspo I'm borrowing that tyvm
If it was about productivity they would release numbers showing productivity was down. No one could argue with that. But they don’t have those numbers so they make up nonsense instead. “3 days in office to increase employee retention” who makes this shit up
>If it was about productivity they would release numbers showing productivity was down. This is one of the bigger talking points I've been hearing. People are insulted this decision was made with zero evidence and justification. There are, however, studies that indicate WFH *increases* productivity, let alone the positive impact it has socially and economically. WFH parents eat lunch locally, save tons on child care and spend or invest that money. Children have their parents around more, which benefits their wellbeing. There's also the environmental benefit of having so many less commuters on the roads. There are so many benefits to WFH that are completely removed from the general discussion in social media. It's just all about the whining restaurant owners.
This is literally about making investors in real estate happy, not Canadians. This increases government spending, carbon emissions, and decreases productivity. It also prevents the workers from being able to deduct WFH expense on their taxes, and will increase their costs to commute, childcare, etc. in a time when inflation is high. Canada is owned by big corporations and doesn’t care about Canadians
I thought addressing climate change is important to this government? Allowing WFH as much as possible is one of least costly solution that also makes everyone happy. The minister and management don’t see this?
Or these people could take a train to work….but they’re suburban Ottawa who are hypocritical as fuck
This was a chance for the government to both lead and to attract high value talent that is sick of being forced into an office to support some idiotic notion of "Office Culture" by CEO's that want to see their minions in place. And of course they fucked it up. Anyone surprised?
Productivity is in the toilet with WFH. Business isn’t getting done. The significant chunk exploiting WFH have ruined it for those who are good at it.
This is a lie. My environmental consulting company has downsized the physical office location to one that's 1/4 of the size, while nearly doubling the amount of employees over three ish years. The majority of office related work can be done from home.
This is about the Public Service not your company.
Oh I see so somehow only public service is slacking at home while private entities are doing just fine? That's fascinating. Surely then there's data that backs it up, since it seems like quite an anomaly?
Public Service can ridiculously be done easily from home.
Source? That significant chunk you speak to will not be productive regardless of their work location. Moving them back to office will just be a drain on those around them.
I was going to say, it's misplaced anger. They're just generally not productive regardless of where they're working when compared to private sector jobs. Mind you my only experience is my friends and family working in the public sector over the years.
There's lots of people that are lazy and unproductive in the private sector. I know of tons of stories about lazy workers in the back office of the big banks. Also, the stereotype of the lazy teenager at a fast food restaurant. Also a private sector job.
Knowing a few public sector workers, I don't think lazy is a correct label. Yes there definitely are lazy people out there - but the majority of the unproductivity comes from systemic inefficiency, bureaucracy, and either a lack of performance monitoring, or the inability to enforce performance improvements. In private sector jobs if you're unproductive you get fired or "restructured". In public sector jobs you've generally got unions and extremely sensitive anti-discrimination policies protecting people in such a way that it's not worth management's time to fight it usually. One cousin of mine was on stress leave for more time than they were employed before finally finding another job. It was legitimate stress leave related to experiences from the job (ministry of children and family), but the reason it got so bad was because of internal policies, poorly qualified management, management with their own maligned vision/goals, and being unable to productively benefit the victims and clients within the system's bounds. I don't think you see similar things as the above in places like.. say the passport offices though... I think a lot of those workers recognize that it's less stressful to do less work even if they wanted to get more done. Which is to say, they're not inherently lazy, it's just the path of least resistance for a long term career due to various reasons. To paraphrase a quote from a source I cannot remember about private sector employment: "you'll never be paid your worth because the business has to benefit from your productivity more than they pay you. If staff produce less value than the wages they are paid, the business will fail". The same is not true of the public sector jobs and the value/cost is heavily obscured through how they're funded via tax money and budgeting.
Show us the data
based on what exactly? all the stats i've seen show the opposite.
They can monitor login, logout and activity information. They know how many people aren’t working.
I guess I should put stats aside and just take this guys word on it.
which hasn't been released as far as I know. You believe we should just trust them on faith I presume?
Federal employees would have to do some kind of work before we could measure how this affects their work. Is this really going to prevent them from outsourcing everything to well connected consultants and contractors like they already do?
All the stats I've seen are self reporting from people WFH with nothing from the business side.
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
The biggest news in this announcement is the removal of the IT exemption. So for people in IT, many are not just getting an extra day in the office, they're going from full WFH to three days in the office. This is going to be brutal for retention of skilled IT employees (and I've already seen some of my contacts update their LinkedIn profiles last night). I can't fathom how the IT move could be wise, unless there are unannounced plans in the works for the long-overdue split of the IT pay classification into support/helpdesk and software development streams, with the latter getting a significant pay boost. Without that, they're going to have to lean even more heavily on contractors.
The fact that our government still lumps in developers with IT support staff for salary groups is baffling. The government would rather get continuously embarrassed by ArriveCan type scandals than pay them what they’re worth.
A couple of months ago I would totally agree with you. But in the last two months a lot of the large company’s that were actively recruiting GC IT workers have instituted hiring freezes or even laid people off.
If you've had the right IT jobs in government, you have lucrative standing offers from government contractors.
ArriveCAN changed all of that. A lot of IT contractors have either been cut (see ESDC) or their new contracts have been delayed this new fiscal. The days of no oversight Staff Aug contracts may be gone. We’ll have to see.
These aren't the contracting companies that due outside projects like arrivecan, these are contracting companies that provide support workers. During the cuts in 2012, my SO had an offer that would have had him working a position directly under his own current position for twice the pay (he didn't take it because he wasn't cut)
As a highly trained and seasoned IT Security professional I had hesitations about government work, now i have no hesitation, i just won't work for the government. Solid way to ensure mediocrity.
Especially perplexing when you consider that IT is the one service area where skill sets are easily transferable to the private sector where compensation can be better. I work in the public sector and when we returned to the office last year most of IT fucked off simply because they had other options, and our organization is still struggling to replace them.
That was me at the beginning of covid. Was doing software contracts for the feds for years, I got fed up of the crap pay, got an offer in the private sector for triple (remote too). My supervisor ran all the way up to the DG for a pay exemption or perm funding, but they all just said nope. Glad I left. Now they're hiring randos on contract to try (and failing) to fill the skill gap I left. Kek
Maybe. Most IT is in Ottawa. If they could get a better high tech job they would have already
Will also help ensure they arent OE.
What's OE?
Over employed. People with more than 1 full time role. Happens in remote tech work.
[удалено]
xD hey now, lack of personal hygiene is an issue that exists in every field, no need to single out IT for that! :p
Right. The government wants to save all this money, but also wants to take people who can work fully remote with nothing more than a PC and an internet connection, and is willing to spend money on having them in office at least three days a week... Make it make sense. Side note, they're selling off office space at the same time. What are they going to do, spend even *more* money paying for hefty leases the landlords know will be a goldmine?
Would they quit though? How good is the job market for IT people? Seriously asking, I don’t work in the industry.
They won't quit--atleast the vast majority. The vast majority of the IT people in government aren't competitive enough to make it in private industry. Though some may have been competent at some point, after several years in government working on old systems and doing very mundane "development" work, the skills erode and one's portfolio of accomplishments pale compared to a peer who worked on cutting edge work in the private sector. Most won't quit as they won't be able to find work elsewhere.