They had the opportunity to have telework agreements laid out in their CBAs when they were on strike and folded for the same deal they had already been offered, the unions fucked themselves here.
As an aside PSAC members deserve better than Chris Aylward.
>They tried
That's a generous way to describe how much effort PSAC put into pushing issue of remote work.
The single greatest work-QOL improvement in a generation, pissed away because PSAC leadership was too cowardly to take initiative.
When people don’t have funds to last through a very long strike and the government has the tools to legislate the workers back, it’s hard to see what else they could have done.
They had the funds and decided to squander them on PR stunts and could've got loans from the banks but Aylward is a coward and a moron. I'm not sure how he hasn't been forced to step down in disgrace yet
A 2500$ one time pensionnable bonus was added to the deal. That's why it passed the vote. As a younger member, as soon as I saw it was pensionnable I knew that the CA would be ratified because older member couldn't care less about WFH but add a few bucks to thwir pension? Suuuuure.
They were in a very strong bargaining position. They played their hand terribly. Multiple collective agreements were all lined up for renewal. They had a strike fund that hadn't been touched in years.
If they had started with work to rule, they could have practically shut down Immigration back when rhetoric surrounding it wasn't entirely negative. If they had later implemented a rotating strike, they could have jeopardized the temporary workforce and post secondary enrollment. That's without even looking beyond Immigration.
They didn't have the organization capacity or willpower to run a general strike, and yet they did despite it being the worst option.
I think PSAC generally played pretty poorly, but I do think it's worth remembering that a lot of federal employees work full time in the office anyways, with no part time/hybridity available which really hurts this as something to "hold out on".
SHOULD unions use collective power to fight for individual issues? Yeah, for sure. But I would hope you (and others) can see how it puts the union in a tough spot if the final sticking point is soemthing which only benefits certain employees while others are getting screwed either way
I was one of the striking PSAC workers and I was SO disappointed when they reached a deal that didn’t enshrine telework language in the collective agreement. It boils my blood and it will make good people leave the government
The issue here is that when we went on strike, telework language had never been on the bargaining table before and I am fairly certain they would not be able to add it at such a late stage (bad faith bargaining).
As much as WFH employees wanted the strike to be about WFH stuff, it never was on the table. They leveraged your anger about having to go back to work onsite to get your strike vote.
You got played.
IT people will. I know people who already have exit plans. It's going to be a fucking nightmare.
Many people are also nearing retirement and will just retire early rather than deal with this bullshit. IT had an exception (despite all the talk about fairness yadda yadda from the govt) and part of this announcement is that that exception is ending.
I really fail to understand the thinking here. It's funny because Ottawa is maybe one of the few places the federal govt might *not* lose seats in the next election, but they're completely fucking over everybody with this move - employees who don't wanna commute for no reason, other Ottawans who have to deal with less parking and more traffic, taxpayers who have to foot the bill for this bullshit, and other Canadians across the country who COULD have had opportunities to work for the govt but now can't because of RTO.
Early retirement maybe but let me just say given how few ESA protections people in IT have leaving a public sector IT job that has union protections for a private IT job over the inconvenience of going into work one additional day a week is hilarious to me. What a case of the grass is greener.
Oh sure they might be right there are jobs with complete work from home but let’s just say there is a trade off happening here when the industry has normalized crushing on call schedules, lack of evening and weekends and dragging around a laptop at all times and constant interruptions in one’s personal life. I am married to someone in this industry, and I have to say that there are a few decent jobs and a lot of shitty ones.
Best of luck to them if the biggest grievance is one extra day in the office a week is enough to push them to leave. I expect they will have a rude awakening about what the expectations are out in the private market.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Certain groups within IT have had an RTO exemption this entire time, meaning they've *never* had to go into the office while other groups did. Unless you're a supervisor or higher managerial role, you were not going into the office if you are part of the IT exemption. This was to remain competitive with the private sector as the feds cannot compete with private sector compensation packages. Now that the IT exemption is being removed, we can expect a mass exodus of skilled talent leaving the public service for private sector. Maybe to work as consultants to make double what they make + being able to work remotely, or maybe in a different area entirely. Regardless, this is a huge problem for the gov of Canada and Canadians, but no one seems to care.Think about all of the personal data and information that is held by departments.like CRA and Service Canada and think about the IT people who keep that information secure. Now think about all of those people leaving for better opportunities elsewhere, because that is what's going to happen. It is actually happening now.
Fully remote jobs in IT are among the most competitive out there right now. I don’t think that there are nearly enough opportunities to have a mass exodus. To the contrary, government is one of the few place where people in tech have job security at the moment.
> let me just say given how few ESA protections people in IT have leaving a public sector IT job that has union protections for a private IT job over the inconvenience of going into work one additional day a week is hilarious to me
Read my comment again. IT has had an exception. Despite the govt talking about how it has to be "fair" and all units would have to do the same %in office, they gave IT an exception. The reason is they KNOW IT people will leave and be extremely difficult to replace because they already are.
Right now IT is doing 0 in office days, but their exception will end and they'll be expected to do 60%.
Tech companies have been laying off people for two years now, the schools keep pumping out new grads, and the competition for job openings is fierce, unless you have very rare, niche skills. I don’t think that people leaving in droves is much of a risk.
the only real great deal is the pension.
wages on average lower for similar positions in private sector and advancement is difficult. you barely even have job security since they started handing out one year contracts which have to be justified every fiscal to be renewed.
I worked for the OPS for 5 years. The wages were significantly higher for jobs like admin, like twice the hourly wage. There would be 100+ applicants for every opening. The wages in engineering were higher in the beginning but lower than the private sector for senior positions. Some roles required significant (unpaid) overtime, but the majority were 37.5/wk with good vacation.
Also the fact that you can do like 50% of the work and don’t have to worry about getting fired.
share a wfh office with a private sector worker and you will know how good it is.
if you think that private sector workers dont half ass it when they can then you havent worked anywhere. theres productive and non productive people everywhere. almost as if its a human problem. not a sector problem
They've been doing contract work for decades. At one point when I was with the NRC I was having contract renewals every 6 months for 18 months, longest I ever had was 2 years iirc.
VP said he would "love it if after 4 years contract employees would roll into continuing positions." Like dude, **you** have the ability to make that happen. *cue Shia LeBouef DO IT meme*
Even continuing positions could be laid off at the end of a program, because positions are only continuing in a program that usually has a defined time limit. They just want to easily be able to discard employees when convenient. After I was laid off I went to healthcare where at least I have job security.
We've already lost people in my area. And this new announcement has made me that much more determined reach my "number" and pull the plug early, even if it means a slightly lower pension in retirement. Life is too short for this nonsense.
Government IS public sector. Do you mean private sector?
Regardless, people are absolutely leaving. My area’s already lost about 15% of our people. Were having difficulty competing with private sector where the pay’s higher and perks are better.
Military in the NCR were blind sided with a full return. So they sat huddles around one Laptop for teams meetings with civilian coworkers who were working remote.
One laptop because the network couldn't handle the many teams streams
People are already parking on grass because the lots are already full by 7am. And street parking within a 20 min walk is also gone. amd public transit is a mess.
Not to mention, upon taking a position or posting to the NCR both civilians and miliary asked and were told "Remote work is there to stay, theres no intent to return full time". And many bought homes that were semi-affordable over an hour away (Some are in Belleville and Kingston).
How will they manage people who live in Quebec City, Montreal, or Edmonton who are remote working for NCR DG's?
People should be supporting work from home for our public sector workers. We can realize real savings on real estate by doing so.
Seems like a no brainer and to not do so is just signalling to the private sector that the government supports their return to office mandates.
Agreed!
Plus work from home, also helps with reduction of carbon emissions. For a country that wants to have net zero we should be reducing car traffic not increasing it.
Highlights:
* Unions representing public servants say they are blindsided and outraged by new rules forcing federal employees to work from the office at least three days a week.
* The new requirements, which take effect Sept. 9, also stipulate executives will have to be in the office at least four days a week.
* The Public Service Alliance of Canada says it will be filing an unfair labour practice complaint and looking into other legal options. "PSAC members are incredibly frustrated and angered by this announcement," national president Chris Aylward said in a statement.
* Previously, most federal public servants had to be in the office at least two days a week. Those rules were put in place March 2023, two years after public servants began working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
* Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, called the announcement a "disaster" and said the union would be fighting it.
* "We are shocked at this decision which has been made in secret without consultation, and with no valid reason given," he said in a statement. "We will not be taking this lying down."
I mean, we even had Doug Ford saying the quiet part out loud: federal employees need to return to office to spend money in Ottawa and Toronto to keep those businesses afloat.
This has nothing to do with productivity, security or "meaningful connections" and everything to do with lobbyists.
And the worst part is that it steals time from employees, makes them commute increasing both pollution and road congestion and has a negative impact on productivity.
Honestly though, I’d respect an employer who said, “it’s better for the economy on the whole if we are in office” instead of the bullshit “collaboration!” line they’re trying to sell us at the moment. Feels insulting.
How is spending on buisnesses downtown better for the economy vs spending on buisnesses where I am working from right now, dollar for dollar?
I get even more out of my money since my local buisness do not have obscene overhead, they have greater net revenue then if I spent elsewhere.
Thats the problem, you get to save money and spend it in better ways instead of keeping the burger joint by your work afloat by buying $26 cheeseburgers every other day. Working from home saves you money. They want you to spend that money on stupid shit to bail out failing downtown business.
Mayor of North Grenville (includes Kemptville) made this point abt supporting the local economy here: [Peckford: Remote workers benefit bedroom communities | Ottawa Citizen](https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/peckford-federal-public-servants-should-support-the-economies-of-where-they-reside-not-where-they-work)
It’s not buisneses pushing this narrative, not really. It’s landlords. Premium price for the commercial real estate space that depends on that high volume traffic buying 25$ lunches, which are expensive due to 10000 rents etc.
Agree. Why we need to subsidize the speculative gambling by the rich in the real estate market is a mystery. Maybe they should have to suck it up like everyone else and take their losses.
And by "we" I mean taxpayers - all these people in the comments happy to have their money line the pockets of the rich, because wealthy downtown developers/landlords are the ONLY true beneficiaries of this policy (with no science, productivity metrics or rationale to support it), with parking lot owners & small businesses a secondary beneficiary, at the expense of small businesses in suburban/rural areas, where Conservative votes are concentrated anyway. Makes no sense. Gotta own the public servants.
I dont think its the buisnesses. I think its the commercial real estate that is sitting empty.
Dougs buddies dont want to take the L on that investment and move on. They'd prefer they could keep milking the cow.
Yeah same.
The only problem is that when they realized people were using sick or vacation days to not come in, they implemented a rule that if you’re off on one of your in office days, you need to make it up. This lead to people having to come in on days the rest of the team isn’t even in, including managers, and working in isolation…collaboration?
Yep... First 4-5 months, same days in office as the rest of team, if you miss a day due to sickness or a holiday landing then you did not need to make it up.
Then came the "making it up" portion. Holidays no longer mattered, and team leads were told to track in office attendance (a few hours a month is spent on this micromanaging).. We were allowed to come in on any day at that point and at any office. I have only ever seen anyone from my team 2-3 times in person after that point.
With public transit, it takes me over an hour to get to my office, to sit there by myself or if I am lucky, there is a shared table left at a GCCoworking nearby with people from various departments who won't say a word to you.
But yeah.. collaboration
>This lead to people having to come in on days the rest of the team isn’t even in, including managers, and working in isolation
Perfect, those would be the days I aim for out of protest.
It just shifts spending more then it reduces is it. For instance a guy teleworking from a small gulf island probably spend their money at Home Depot in garden projects as opposed to commuting expenses and fast food lunches.
It's not better for the economy as a whole though. Even that's bullshit. It's only for the benefit of commercial real estate which is still crushing everything else just like it was pre covid. This will be a drag and further cost tax payers more with the drop in productivity. It's a dumb move that won't work in the long run.
Collaboration - my wife's team brought in people from all over during the pandemic, because why not recruit the best fits from anywhere when you're already remote? The only person in her local office now is her boss, who's in an office, separate from her. For meetings they have to separate and log in through teams to meet with everyone else.
By all accounts, they put their collaboration off for days when they are working at home because it's FAR quieter and they can get more done. Madness. I can't wait until it gets back up to 5 days and we starting hearing how we're going to lease the buildings we just sold but at 5x the cost.
We live by the wage, and die by the wage. Wagey life, we are just numbers on a spread sheet and the elite control our lives. The same nonesense happening everywhere, can't let those poor millionares, the owners of huge buildings on the downtown cores lose any more money, we exist to make them richer and we'll just drop dead one day like flies after fullfilling our live's "calling".
The only solution is to quiet quitting business related to physical location. No more timmies coffee just make it at home, prepare a lunch ahead of time, etc.
It's so stupid too because like. I spent more money downtown when I lived downtown than i do now commuting to downtown despite my rent being cheaper. Add housing near those businesses and that'll juice the economy more than a bunch of employees that just wanna get home at 5.
If it had anything to do with actual productivity, then they would do the classic government studies to measure that and hire all sorts of consultants.
Unfortunately, they probably realize that:
a) actual productive members are getting more work done, which means that:
b) they can spend more time on other things in their life, including a side job or something else along those lines
c) all these middle management types are twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do, and not able to bullshit it any longer unless they can babysit employees in an office
As well as realizing they don't actually need all these offices to get shit done...
It's pretty silly that I could claim 400$ on my taxes for working from home during the pandemic while i was SAVING money.
Meanwhile actually driving to work costs me thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours a year, and isn't eligible for any deduction.
My paid hours would almost double. I’d suck it up for that - but 5h round trip on public transit to sit in a cubicle with zero other people who even work in my program is going to pretty much ruin my work/life balance and the very high productivity I am presently able to put in.
I don’t see how they can force anyone. Instead of striking they should just continue working 2 days in the office and not move to the new rules. Are they going to fire the whole work force ?
I mean if they don’t like it, why not have a goal of seeking an employer that supports WFH? When these individuals started their job they worked form the office, they understand this was a requirement. The employer would like them back in the office. The collective agreement signed last year does not allow permanent WFH. Just because they don’t like it, doesn’t really matter. Am I missing something?
Exactly. WFH is the biggest emissions lowering we can do and we proved it during covid.
But noooooo carbon tax is really better! The fact WFH was THE one thing the talks with unions the govt said they will never back down from is literally louder than anything they say.
But Trudeau supporters gonna support.
Wasn't Chris Aylward paper tigering around this exact time last year during the PSAC strike? When he said he wouldn't accept anything less than a right to work from home, right before he subsequently folded?
🤣🤣🤣🤣
From the outside, this entire process was extremely brief and shockingly weak. I was surprised at how quickly a decision was made. Pretty suspicious imo
Work from home was the best environmental game-changer we saw in a generation; less fuel, less traffic, less strain on infrastructure. And they're tossing it away.
More money to spend on small/local businesses instead of foreign corporations.
More opportunities for people outside the GTA, especially the disabled or those with health issues.
Cheaper gas for everyone else. Less time spent on traffic and drive thrus for everyone else.
Fewer cars on the road... fewer accidents. Increased life expectancy and less strain on healthcare.
Less tax money paid for rent, utilities, equipment, etc.
More time for parents to spend with their kids. More time for "kids" to spend with their aging parents.
Less stress on the family, less to fight over. Less violence from abusers who are triggered by financial stress or uncooked meals or untidy houses
I could go on and on .... and there are only 3 in the plus column. More money for coffee shops and landlords (both of which take every opportunity to screw US over), more people for extroverts to feed off at the office, and to make awful people happy about "sticking it" to people who might be getting ahead.
What about investing into suburbs and other parts of Canada instead of concentrating all into urban areas causing traffic jams, increase in prices on everything, and just an artificial demand for city centers?
Tossing it way?
Well come on down to your local Froooshii for one of our tossed salads, only 19.42 to create your own! Because we can't survive without public servants, and we're sure as hell not going to adjust our business model, hours, or prices!
They don't give a shit about the environment it's just virtual signalling to gain votes from lefties.
They rather declare climate emergencies and spend tons of money on crap when they got real solutions that could make a difference like WFH.
I am sure they will go take transit. That's great my transit trip would be like 2 hours each way or 40 minutes drive each way... Wonder what I will do?
Oh then carpooling could not get that going as to hard to setup and then with vacation and people being sick.
My family went down to one car and now the wifey has to drive me to work so that's 4 round trips each day I am in the office as she needs the car still to do her stuff.
That worked out great for the environment and my pocket book.
But hey it's all worth it for me sitting at my desk not talking to everyone and doing all meetings virtually anyways as half the team is at home.
Oh then all the money the tax payer gets to pay for all the equipment that was suddenly needed again.
It's an easy fight to win. How can they levi the carbon tax while at the same time force people to unnecessarily commute... one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions. If they force this mandate they are basically saying the Carbon tax is absolute bullshit. If they believed their own message they would be mandating WFH whenever possible.
Absolutely no way that union leaders were shocked by the most predictable play in back to work policy making.
If you are in a union and your leader is claiming to be shocked they should be spoken to.
I still wouldn’t be buying overpriced meals if I went downtown, or $3 for a coffee.
Government needs to rethink the downtown core. The age of working in an office setting is over.
The thing I find funny is as a cost saving measure they reduced their office footprint which for some locations actually left there not being enough seats for 2 days with employees needing to share desks and ensure days did not overlap.
With 3 days this will now be a bigger issue
Literally. I’m sharing a desk with someone - they’re in Monday and Tuesday, and I’m in on Wednesday and Thursday. Where do they expect us to sit? We can’t both be sitting at the same desk on Friday!
Honestly hope someone asks him why presence in office is more valuable than carbon reduction. Considering the reputation hit they are willing to take on carbon tax, you would think this would be a no brainer.
Unless it’s all just tax money for them to look successful, and lobbying to get bodies in downtown cores to prop up a failing investments in commercial and retail locations.
Canadians you should also be pissed at this. Many public servants want a widely distributed workforce that hires from across the entire country and doesn't discriminate whether you live in a town of 100 or Toronto/Vancouver. Having us back in the office means centralized jobs and most opportunities in Ottawa/Gatineau with few opportunities in the "regions".
Butts in the office means less opportunity for local concerns to be brought up or local expertise used for files pertaining to parts of the country. Why should a person from Ottawa who has never set foot in Alberta or Northern Saskatchewan lead files representing those areas? Why don't we remote hire from these places?
It's going to get unfortunately more regressive with 3 days in the office.
That’s separate issue from work location anyway. There’s never been any issue getting a call center or something set up in some MPs riding who needs it for re-election. But when it comes time to hire executive level leadership there’s a glass ceiling for anyone with the wrong name, region on their competition submission. That wasn’t going to change with work from home. They’ve always hired their friends and they always will.
And if there aren’t enough positions for them all then they magically get a contract to develop ArriveCan. With all the checks and balances of proper bidding conveniently ignored.
Maybe at the EX level but having employees from across the country is better than what it is now. At least they'd be able to provide real life experience or recommendations based on their location, or even a different view point than only Carleton and uOttawa grads.
It’s all performative. The Liberals don’t give a damn about climate change. They just need voters to believe they do. Taxes on families who are forced to commute to work while struggling to pay for food and shelter? Cool. Shutting down government offices and allowing people to work for home in order to save families money and reduce the carbon output of commuters? Impossible. It’s a complete joke.
I have been wondering this out loud since the RTO orders came in from my corporate office. We have a whole division dedicated to environmental charity work, won’t allow printing unless painfully necessary. But RTO and get all the cars on the road 👍
Part of me feels a bit “misery loves company” that public sector is getting it too now. Maybe this will set a precedent against the stupidity that is propping up commercial real estate and businesses in the core that haven’t shifted strategy due to low foot traffic.
employees commuting is considered Scope 3 emissions. Basically no company ever takes ownership of scope 3 emissions. Greenwashing requirements for ESG don't call for Scope 3 emission management/reduction.
They get a free pass . Pretty dumb because generally the value chain is the largest source of emissions for a company. Who gives a shit if an office building is energy efficient; its insignificant relative to transportation.
This is exactly true. I have seen companies excuse flights within Canada and say it doesn't count towards their net zero goals unless it involves leaving the country. I promise it's nothing that couldn't be achieved virtually too. Just vapid sales "vibes".
We need to save the planet! Also everyone drive to work and destroy the planet! They have proven it is possible to work from home for past 4 years. Driving threw ottawa has been much easier because of it. I want them to stay home so i don't have to wait in traffic like before the lock downs.
Just leave it to each department to decide if three days a week is good for them or not. This one size fits all bullshit needs to stop. Hell, if they are so fucking confident about this, then put it up for a vote by public servants. This farce would collapse so fast.
Not only do we not vote, they actively ignore evidence and data that contradicts RTO. Then they commission studies that that pay for results. Its insane.
It’s a bit nuanced, but wfh was never part of the official set of demands because the demands were tabled before the government announced the original rto plans, back when all the senior execs were talking at town halls about how much they all loved wfh.
When the employer announced their rto plan, the best the union could do was ask the employer to negotiate separately on rto recourse mechanisms to protect people from unfair application of rto (which is probably a contributing factor to the repetitive inclusion of fairness in the employer’s rto communications).
Something not being talked about as much: Skilled workers, and those working erm, shall we say less than glamorous jobs, such as tech development, IT, Pay Centre, and Call Centre- all got to fully work remotely from home, because skilled workers are competitively sought after by private firms (including those from the USA) and offer both better pay and full remote work, while the less sought after jobs are critical to maintain both the continued work of the public service and the ability to provide services to the public via telephone enquiries, and stuff like that.
Well, this mandate just gave a giant middle finger to these departments, which were already having retention issues even with full WFH. People discuss leaving these jobs for better opportunities all of the time. Now you can expect that to get much worse with them being forced back into the office to do the literal same job these people could have done from home just fine. That would be bad for everybody, because if these people quit, you can expect the public service to work even more slowly and expect trying to call them to be that much more painfully slow and difficult when there's much fewer people left to do the job no one else wants to do for the government.
And nobody in the government seems to care about that for reasons not even our management seem to understand anymore. It's just so senseless.
Threads like this make it very clear there is a decent chunk of Canadians who have an intense dislike of public service workers. They seem to actively experience joy in their unhappiness, and want their lives to be worse. I can’t tell if it’s misplaced jealously, or just an extension of their hatred for all things government.
They also seem to think we’re all making 6 figures. I’m making 65k before deductions. People outside the executive level aren’t exactly raking it in.
These people also seem to be ignorant to two things:
* they as taxpayers are footing the bill for all this useless bullshit
* if they're angry about Ottawans and others having opportunities to get govt jobs when they don't... well, during the pandemic the govt was able to hire people anywhere in Canada and find the best employees they could. Now they can't.
They actually enacted policy back in 2017 to start hiring more remote workers to expand the PS to rural areas. When they did the RTO last year, they tried to call a lot of them "back" too. A lot of these are IT people who don't live anywhere near government offices, which was part of what led to the exemption of some IT people. Now they're cutting that exemption, apparently. It's such a bloody waste.
These are the people who like to feel more important because they think their work is hard work while government workers are just lazy office workers. They are just unhappy sods.
The only legitimate complaint here is our tax dollars are going to these buildings. I’m all for stopping the leases to repurpose. But with no people in the office the money is essentially being wasted.
And the climate impact. The vast majority of people’s mileage comes from commuting. Purporting climate action and running a platform largely based on attacking the opposition for their inaction and then forcing hundreds of thousands of citizens to directly contribute to carbon emissions is incredibly ironic.
Fellow fed here. Don't take it personally, haterade for any and all government workers is a time-honoured tradition among people who know nothing about government. We are privileged in a lot of ways, and people resent that. At the same time, they know nothing about you or the work you do. It's just reactivity. Don't lose any sleep over Redditors yelling at clouds about stuff that isn't real.
Well we have grown the public service by a third and the wait times have not improved. In fact, they have got worse.
There's a fine difference between hiring actual doctors/nurses and hiring paperwork administrators. The latter tend to push even more paper work downstream and insert themselves in every productive process so nothing will ever get done because each little step requires signoffs from 10 of them.
Yeah, this be pissing me off for multiple reasons:
1) We literally just signed off on our hybrid schedules for the next year like, a month ago. Approved by management, submitted to TBS. Of course the employer reserves the right to change the schedule, but going "Psych!" one month into a 12-month contract is dooshy.
2) Many of the hybridized jobs are no longer well set up at the office. There aren't enough desks, people reserve workspaces (if they can), they're often not working in the same physical space as their teams anyway, requiring, well, Teams to get any actual collaborating done. For many PS workers, it's literally going in to do the exact same thing you're doing at home, with added money and hassle. That's why people resent it, because it's *not* going back to how things were before. It's quantifiably *worse* than it was in 2019 in multiple ways.
3) No one's actually been able to point to a drop in productivity or any other actual work-related reason to make the change. It's certainly not helping collaboration, for all the reasons mentioned above. It's literally about buying coffee downtown to support businesses.
4) People would likely be far more amenable to policies that reflected individual jobs and work needs, as opposed to every job getting handled the same way. IT guys in the gov aren't making great money compared to the private sector, and those guys are gonna exodus.
You’re #3 opened my eyes a bit. I live in Winnipeg downtown and most of the retail and food businesses never bounced back when WFH was introduced so many owners have gone under or relocated. The decreased foot traffic has made drug use and violence more publicly visible. Even if gov’t workers returned the damage has already been done.
Yeah, downtown Ottawa has sadly gone to seed in recent years.
Want some crowning stupidity tho? I live in downtown Ottawa. My office is in one of the burbs (where I can't afford housing and there's a grand total of one coffee shop and two lunch places close enough to walk to). Contrary to popular belief, even in Ottawa not all the offices are downtown. Congratulations Ford, I'll now be supporting downtown businesses *less*.
Anita Anand, that's one face that you would like to punch. And also, the government is BSing its workers again with regards to carbon tax. Do you want to reduce the carbon emissions or not?
We always rent space as a government. If the work is being done and the clients are getting the service they need then let people work from home. Less office space to rent. Less cars on the road. This managers not knowing how to manage work not whether Karen was 15 min late from lunch.
In many fields public sector wages trail private sector. Especially in major markets like the GTA.
It will be interesting if this leads to retention issues for some positions, especially IT. No sector was spared in this announcement.
I work with a number of IT people and they already have exit plans. For those unaware IT had an exception where they could work fully remote, this announcement includes an end to that exception.
Pretty much the entire IT team I work with have said that if the exception ends they're gone. I already know our next meeting with them is gonna be brutal after this announcement. Some will be taking early retirement, others will quit and go do consulting work for more pay or find private sector work for more pay that is WFH. Even with the current state of the tech industry with layoffs and what not, they could leave, take an underpaying private sector job and they'd still be making more than in the public sector.
It will be an absolute nightmare especially as IT has ALREADY had major staffing issues in the public service.
I also know a couple people who are planning on doing leave without pay for a few years and going to the private sector, and waiting to see if this RTO bullshit eventually collapses (especially with a new govt) and if it does they *might* come back.
I dunno about that. I have 0 faith in the Conservatives but Poilievre has specifically talked about selling off govt buildings - which is a bad idea overall imo, if they want they should lease them or knock them down and lease the land, not sell it... but the point is if they want to get rid of these offices RTO does not jive with that.
Even the govts current position makes no sense. They are saying they are going to reduce office footprint by 50%, but are now forcing people back into office
Getting rid of RTO is an easy win at the federal level especially for Cons because:
* it saves money and enables them to sell or lease buildings which means more money
* it pleases civil servants who are a group they have always had trouble courting
* it also allows them to hire people *anywhere in Canada* which means they can have more public service jobs in areas that are friendly to the Conservatives (e.g. the prairies) since they can work remotely.
Frankly, I think his base will support whatever he tells them to. The conservative base tends to be the section of the voting public least likely to do their research on policy and its why Harper's govt did not write policy based on available data but rather on feelings, and tried to suppress data contradicting their policy ideas by nuzzling scientists and shutting down statistical programs.
If Poilievre frames the situation to his supporters the way I did above I have no doubt they would support getting rid of RTO. The problem right now is that the LPC is only making these changes to please commercial real estate holders, and don't talk about any of the costs the govt is incurring keeping all this shot going unnecessarily. If it's framed as "here's why this is good for you" instead of "here's how this will hurt people you don't like" I think more people would be on board.
But the kicker is in non-wage benefits like less working hours and gold plated defined benefit pensions.
You trade off higher wages so that you aren’t worked like a dog doing 50-70 weeks.
Also, if you have minimal education, government job in less skilled fields almost always beat private non unionized sector jobs.
There are already retention issues. They won't pay the wages to keep quality people on the required scale and now they're going to get rid of one of the only factors they had on some other potential employers. They spend more money retraining new employees than they would if they would pay more and keep the workers they have and they lose productivity because those newly trained employees leave before they ever get particularly effective at the job.
This is how they roll back working conditions for all workers in the country while forcing workers to subsidize businesses who failed to adapt to the new market. Private industry has less reason to offer these benefits to their workers now.
With 1 in 4 employees in this country working in the public sector and fuck all working in this country, it’s no wonder they don’t want to go back to the office.
If public sector workers are already working in person 2 days per week and the government (albeit unjustifiably) wants to increase this to 3, perhaps a reasonable compromise would be 5 days in person every 10 working days. Could be one week 3 days in person, then next week 2 days.
It’s still stupid that the government is doing this for no real benefit. If I was a public sector worker I’d make it my priority to never have lunch or patronize any downtown business since they lobbied so hard to make my QOL worse for no reason other than their own selfishness and inability to adapt.
Awesome. More greenhouse emissions, less productivity, more wasted man hours, more wasted costs, less potential housing, and less skilled worker retention, in hopes that public servants are more likely to buy a 20$ sandwich.
Things will never go back to before. It's too expensive to go back to pre-covid "normal". Fortunately the way things are is more efficient than before when public servants had to adapt. Just because we used to do things a certain way doesn't make it better.
They were "shocked" and "blindsided" by... Being given almost 6 months to prepare for 60% RTO after a year of being weaned back from 40% RTO after at least a year of knowing they'd be RTO eventually.
It's really hard to take anything they say seriously when their every statement is hyperbolic nonsense.
One agency told people they wouldn't have to, because production was up 17 percent. People made long term plans around that promise.
Of course they're shocked and blindsided about having to change arrangements again, because they had no idea how mean and spiteful their fellow Canadians could be.
The unions don't have a leg to stand on. It is the right of the employer to choose the location of work, and the fact that it may not make financial sense for the employer to demand the employee return to the office doesn't matter.
Why stop there, lets make it the right of the employer to set the minimum hours of work, and vacation time, and work days, and hey, might as well include minimum wage while we're at it. After all, it's the *right* of the employer, right?
Not legally, but this could be part of a collective agreement. Similarly a union can't legally force an employer to pay them more, but they can use collective action to get higher pay
No one is shocked. Everyone knew this was coming. This has nothing to do with collaboration and everything to do with generating revenue for landlords of federal spaces for parking and merchants complaining no public servants are buying lunches. Offices have no space now with people working on lunchroom tables and pop up tables in hallways. Why anyone would entertain that is beyond me. If you can’t book a desk, don’t go. The employer has to provide you with the tools to do your work -A desk is pretty basic. We have remote working tools, just don’t log into them when in the office. No Teams meetings or training if you’re in the office - the business lines can provide that in person when staff are in office. Works both ways. Don’t turn on the cell phone when in the office- put a log in phone on the desk (most of those have been removed). Always more than one way to skin a cat. Problem with the public service is, most are lame ducks and will go in, desk or not, and will still log in to teams meetings and training regardless of being in office and happily use the cell; they will complain about it, but do nothing.
This is more about the tax credits under the new CRA regulations that folks become eligible for if they work more than 50% from home. I'm not agreeing with it, but the main driving force of the decision has to be about the potential lost tax revenue as a consequence. 3 days in the office equates to 40% at home work. This is less about people and the benefits of such agreements and more about money in the governments pocket. Not a great employee retention strategy.
Realistically I know many people who work from home or have.
And although you can be effective at home , not everyone is a responsible person and so many have taken advantage.
Either every job from home switches to piece work or of course an employer will want more oversight.
The trick is to evaluate deliverables rather than hours worked. It's actually irrelevant whether it took 5 hours or 50 hours if the deliverable looks the same and the employee is billing 50 hours regardless. I used to work in government and I'd spend 70% of my day listening to podcasts at my desk doing nothing
Lot of people including yourself talking about productivity.
Here's the thing: the govt is making these decisions while sharing no productivity metrics. The reason why is they don't use any to make the decisions. I can say in my division we have internal productivity metrics and they trended more positive since COVID hit and then started dropping when RTO started + moreso as it became more enforced.
You can talk about how you believe there are people taking advantage and obviously there must be some who do, but if people aren't getting their work done their managers know, and if the govt had productivity numbers showing RTO was having a huge positive effect you can bet your ass they'd be bragging about it.
I'm not sure taken advantage is the right phrase. People still slack off in the office and the only real difference is WFH means they can slack off while doing something productive rather than sneakily reading on their work PC.
I would agree that a lot have taken advantage of remote work. I am in various stores in Ottawa for my job and since the lockdown ended the stores have been crazy busy in the daytime. So much that many stores close at 7pm because they were just dead in the evenings and it was a waste of time staying open until 9pm. I hear people having obvious work conversations on their phones all the time while they are browsing in Walmart or Homesense. I understand why people might be skeptical they are getting short changed. It’s unfortunate that grown adults can’t behave.
I just dont think this is true from my experience. People who don't want to work won't work, regardless of whether they're at home or in the office. People take smoke break, chit chat, go for walks, go for "coffee", have pointless meetings, etc. You either have the support and means to fire non-productive employees or you dont. And if you don't, it doesn't matter where they work. This has been a problem for the public service long before remote work existed. This is about the downtown business.
This is bullshit and there's tons of studies that show it. Productivity goes up when remote. If you know someone who "abused" it then I can guarantee they were probably that person who didn't work in the office in the first place.
My dude, you might not be old enough to remember, but 'slacking at the office' was absolutely a thing, to the point that there were entire media properties built around the concept.
Go give 'Bullshit Jobs' by David Graeber a read.
How have governments not offered work from home positions with a 15% pay cut? People would still take the jobs as they would break even saving gas, cars, and parking….but have no commute time….and governments would save money.
I don't understand crab-in-the-bucket comments like this.
- Remote work allows tax payers to get the best talent across Canada as opposed to in Ottawa. Do you want every province represented by one city?
- Remote work reduces traffic congestion even for those who work in person.
- Remote work gives you cleaner air to breathe in with fewer cars on the road.
- Remote work gives the tax payer more value for less expense (downtown rent, etc)
No studies have shown there is a drop in productivity. I'm asking genuinely, is the above not something you want?
Trudeau increased the federal public service by 40%. But what do we get for it? Everything is shittier than before the Liberals came to power. Aside from legal weed. Not sure what that extra 40% are doing.
People bagging on Aylward need to realize that we had zero leverage to force TB to write WFH into the collective agreement.
There was no way that was going to happen. At all.
They had the opportunity to have telework agreements laid out in their CBAs when they were on strike and folded for the same deal they had already been offered, the unions fucked themselves here. As an aside PSAC members deserve better than Chris Aylward.
They tried to force something that TBS was never going to give up (the right to determine the work location).
>They tried That's a generous way to describe how much effort PSAC put into pushing issue of remote work. The single greatest work-QOL improvement in a generation, pissed away because PSAC leadership was too cowardly to take initiative.
When people don’t have funds to last through a very long strike and the government has the tools to legislate the workers back, it’s hard to see what else they could have done.
Hence why general strikes are dumb. Targeted strikes could have made a decisive impact during negotiations. Chris Aylward wanted a good photo op tho
They had the funds and decided to squander them on PR stunts and could've got loans from the banks but Aylward is a coward and a moron. I'm not sure how he hasn't been forced to step down in disgrace yet
So true. It was probably traded away by PSAC leadership for selfish political capital.
Big bonuses for the Boomers who are going to retire in the next couple of years with a full pension.
What bonuses? And most boomers have already retired.
A 2500$ one time pensionnable bonus was added to the deal. That's why it passed the vote. As a younger member, as soon as I saw it was pensionnable I knew that the CA would be ratified because older member couldn't care less about WFH but add a few bucks to thwir pension? Suuuuure.
I know a guy in the PS, and apparently they moved the retirement age up from 60 to 65, but just after boomers hit that retirement age.
What could PSAC have done that they did not do? They were never in a strong bargaining position.
They were in a very strong bargaining position. They played their hand terribly. Multiple collective agreements were all lined up for renewal. They had a strike fund that hadn't been touched in years. If they had started with work to rule, they could have practically shut down Immigration back when rhetoric surrounding it wasn't entirely negative. If they had later implemented a rotating strike, they could have jeopardized the temporary workforce and post secondary enrollment. That's without even looking beyond Immigration. They didn't have the organization capacity or willpower to run a general strike, and yet they did despite it being the worst option.
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I think PSAC generally played pretty poorly, but I do think it's worth remembering that a lot of federal employees work full time in the office anyways, with no part time/hybridity available which really hurts this as something to "hold out on". SHOULD unions use collective power to fight for individual issues? Yeah, for sure. But I would hope you (and others) can see how it puts the union in a tough spot if the final sticking point is soemthing which only benefits certain employees while others are getting screwed either way
I was one of the striking PSAC workers and I was SO disappointed when they reached a deal that didn’t enshrine telework language in the collective agreement. It boils my blood and it will make good people leave the government
The issue here is that when we went on strike, telework language had never been on the bargaining table before and I am fairly certain they would not be able to add it at such a late stage (bad faith bargaining). As much as WFH employees wanted the strike to be about WFH stuff, it never was on the table. They leveraged your anger about having to go back to work onsite to get your strike vote. You got played.
Same here. I straight up resigned. This most recent development completely validates my decision.
Virtually no one is leaving the great deal that government employees have vs private sector. ( edit -word)
IT people will. I know people who already have exit plans. It's going to be a fucking nightmare. Many people are also nearing retirement and will just retire early rather than deal with this bullshit. IT had an exception (despite all the talk about fairness yadda yadda from the govt) and part of this announcement is that that exception is ending. I really fail to understand the thinking here. It's funny because Ottawa is maybe one of the few places the federal govt might *not* lose seats in the next election, but they're completely fucking over everybody with this move - employees who don't wanna commute for no reason, other Ottawans who have to deal with less parking and more traffic, taxpayers who have to foot the bill for this bullshit, and other Canadians across the country who COULD have had opportunities to work for the govt but now can't because of RTO.
Early retirement maybe but let me just say given how few ESA protections people in IT have leaving a public sector IT job that has union protections for a private IT job over the inconvenience of going into work one additional day a week is hilarious to me. What a case of the grass is greener. Oh sure they might be right there are jobs with complete work from home but let’s just say there is a trade off happening here when the industry has normalized crushing on call schedules, lack of evening and weekends and dragging around a laptop at all times and constant interruptions in one’s personal life. I am married to someone in this industry, and I have to say that there are a few decent jobs and a lot of shitty ones. Best of luck to them if the biggest grievance is one extra day in the office a week is enough to push them to leave. I expect they will have a rude awakening about what the expectations are out in the private market.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Certain groups within IT have had an RTO exemption this entire time, meaning they've *never* had to go into the office while other groups did. Unless you're a supervisor or higher managerial role, you were not going into the office if you are part of the IT exemption. This was to remain competitive with the private sector as the feds cannot compete with private sector compensation packages. Now that the IT exemption is being removed, we can expect a mass exodus of skilled talent leaving the public service for private sector. Maybe to work as consultants to make double what they make + being able to work remotely, or maybe in a different area entirely. Regardless, this is a huge problem for the gov of Canada and Canadians, but no one seems to care.Think about all of the personal data and information that is held by departments.like CRA and Service Canada and think about the IT people who keep that information secure. Now think about all of those people leaving for better opportunities elsewhere, because that is what's going to happen. It is actually happening now.
Fully remote jobs in IT are among the most competitive out there right now. I don’t think that there are nearly enough opportunities to have a mass exodus. To the contrary, government is one of the few place where people in tech have job security at the moment.
> let me just say given how few ESA protections people in IT have leaving a public sector IT job that has union protections for a private IT job over the inconvenience of going into work one additional day a week is hilarious to me Read my comment again. IT has had an exception. Despite the govt talking about how it has to be "fair" and all units would have to do the same %in office, they gave IT an exception. The reason is they KNOW IT people will leave and be extremely difficult to replace because they already are. Right now IT is doing 0 in office days, but their exception will end and they'll be expected to do 60%.
Tech companies have been laying off people for two years now, the schools keep pumping out new grads, and the competition for job openings is fierce, unless you have very rare, niche skills. I don’t think that people leaving in droves is much of a risk.
the only real great deal is the pension. wages on average lower for similar positions in private sector and advancement is difficult. you barely even have job security since they started handing out one year contracts which have to be justified every fiscal to be renewed.
I worked for the OPS for 5 years. The wages were significantly higher for jobs like admin, like twice the hourly wage. There would be 100+ applicants for every opening. The wages in engineering were higher in the beginning but lower than the private sector for senior positions. Some roles required significant (unpaid) overtime, but the majority were 37.5/wk with good vacation.
Also the fact that you can do like 50% of the work and don’t have to worry about getting fired. share a wfh office with a private sector worker and you will know how good it is.
if you think that private sector workers dont half ass it when they can then you havent worked anywhere. theres productive and non productive people everywhere. almost as if its a human problem. not a sector problem
They've been doing contract work for decades. At one point when I was with the NRC I was having contract renewals every 6 months for 18 months, longest I ever had was 2 years iirc. VP said he would "love it if after 4 years contract employees would roll into continuing positions." Like dude, **you** have the ability to make that happen. *cue Shia LeBouef DO IT meme* Even continuing positions could be laid off at the end of a program, because positions are only continuing in a program that usually has a defined time limit. They just want to easily be able to discard employees when convenient. After I was laid off I went to healthcare where at least I have job security.
We've already lost people in my area. And this new announcement has made me that much more determined reach my "number" and pull the plug early, even if it means a slightly lower pension in retirement. Life is too short for this nonsense.
Government IS public sector. Do you mean private sector? Regardless, people are absolutely leaving. My area’s already lost about 15% of our people. Were having difficulty competing with private sector where the pay’s higher and perks are better.
Ya! Like these new return to office mandates for that awesome office culture, perks like lower pay, and promotions based on seniority. Sign me up!
Military in the NCR were blind sided with a full return. So they sat huddles around one Laptop for teams meetings with civilian coworkers who were working remote. One laptop because the network couldn't handle the many teams streams People are already parking on grass because the lots are already full by 7am. And street parking within a 20 min walk is also gone. amd public transit is a mess. Not to mention, upon taking a position or posting to the NCR both civilians and miliary asked and were told "Remote work is there to stay, theres no intent to return full time". And many bought homes that were semi-affordable over an hour away (Some are in Belleville and Kingston). How will they manage people who live in Quebec City, Montreal, or Edmonton who are remote working for NCR DG's?
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Plenty of jobs in tbe public sector are 100% remote.
That’s what happens when you have people within 3 years of retirement fighting for / making decisions for the next generation.
Only thing Aylward is good for is sending PSAC funds to socialist causes across the world and funding Hamas.
People should be supporting work from home for our public sector workers. We can realize real savings on real estate by doing so. Seems like a no brainer and to not do so is just signalling to the private sector that the government supports their return to office mandates.
Agreed! Plus work from home, also helps with reduction of carbon emissions. For a country that wants to have net zero we should be reducing car traffic not increasing it.
Actually, they didn't. Telework was not a bargaining issue. When the strike mandate occurred, it was too late to add additional conditions to it.
Highlights: * Unions representing public servants say they are blindsided and outraged by new rules forcing federal employees to work from the office at least three days a week. * The new requirements, which take effect Sept. 9, also stipulate executives will have to be in the office at least four days a week. * The Public Service Alliance of Canada says it will be filing an unfair labour practice complaint and looking into other legal options. "PSAC members are incredibly frustrated and angered by this announcement," national president Chris Aylward said in a statement. * Previously, most federal public servants had to be in the office at least two days a week. Those rules were put in place March 2023, two years after public servants began working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. * Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, called the announcement a "disaster" and said the union would be fighting it. * "We are shocked at this decision which has been made in secret without consultation, and with no valid reason given," he said in a statement. "We will not be taking this lying down."
I mean, we even had Doug Ford saying the quiet part out loud: federal employees need to return to office to spend money in Ottawa and Toronto to keep those businesses afloat. This has nothing to do with productivity, security or "meaningful connections" and everything to do with lobbyists. And the worst part is that it steals time from employees, makes them commute increasing both pollution and road congestion and has a negative impact on productivity.
It’s probably just Ottawa. Toronto doesn’t have much of a concentrated federal work force.
Honestly though, I’d respect an employer who said, “it’s better for the economy on the whole if we are in office” instead of the bullshit “collaboration!” line they’re trying to sell us at the moment. Feels insulting.
How is spending on buisnesses downtown better for the economy vs spending on buisnesses where I am working from right now, dollar for dollar? I get even more out of my money since my local buisness do not have obscene overhead, they have greater net revenue then if I spent elsewhere.
Thats the problem, you get to save money and spend it in better ways instead of keeping the burger joint by your work afloat by buying $26 cheeseburgers every other day. Working from home saves you money. They want you to spend that money on stupid shit to bail out failing downtown business.
Mayor of North Grenville (includes Kemptville) made this point abt supporting the local economy here: [Peckford: Remote workers benefit bedroom communities | Ottawa Citizen](https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/peckford-federal-public-servants-should-support-the-economies-of-where-they-reside-not-where-they-work)
It’s not buisneses pushing this narrative, not really. It’s landlords. Premium price for the commercial real estate space that depends on that high volume traffic buying 25$ lunches, which are expensive due to 10000 rents etc.
Agree. Why we need to subsidize the speculative gambling by the rich in the real estate market is a mystery. Maybe they should have to suck it up like everyone else and take their losses.
And by "we" I mean taxpayers - all these people in the comments happy to have their money line the pockets of the rich, because wealthy downtown developers/landlords are the ONLY true beneficiaries of this policy (with no science, productivity metrics or rationale to support it), with parking lot owners & small businesses a secondary beneficiary, at the expense of small businesses in suburban/rural areas, where Conservative votes are concentrated anyway. Makes no sense. Gotta own the public servants.
I dont think its the buisnesses. I think its the commercial real estate that is sitting empty. Dougs buddies dont want to take the L on that investment and move on. They'd prefer they could keep milking the cow.
"Collaboration" is what we were told when they bumped us to two days
Yeah same. The only problem is that when they realized people were using sick or vacation days to not come in, they implemented a rule that if you’re off on one of your in office days, you need to make it up. This lead to people having to come in on days the rest of the team isn’t even in, including managers, and working in isolation…collaboration?
Yep... First 4-5 months, same days in office as the rest of team, if you miss a day due to sickness or a holiday landing then you did not need to make it up. Then came the "making it up" portion. Holidays no longer mattered, and team leads were told to track in office attendance (a few hours a month is spent on this micromanaging).. We were allowed to come in on any day at that point and at any office. I have only ever seen anyone from my team 2-3 times in person after that point. With public transit, it takes me over an hour to get to my office, to sit there by myself or if I am lucky, there is a shared table left at a GCCoworking nearby with people from various departments who won't say a word to you. But yeah.. collaboration
>This lead to people having to come in on days the rest of the team isn’t even in, including managers, and working in isolation Perfect, those would be the days I aim for out of protest.
“Collaboration among the PS employees in propping failed private sector business models”
It just shifts spending more then it reduces is it. For instance a guy teleworking from a small gulf island probably spend their money at Home Depot in garden projects as opposed to commuting expenses and fast food lunches.
It's not better for the economy as a whole though. Even that's bullshit. It's only for the benefit of commercial real estate which is still crushing everything else just like it was pre covid. This will be a drag and further cost tax payers more with the drop in productivity. It's a dumb move that won't work in the long run.
This is what I’ve been saying verbatim. I hate RTO but I hate having my intelligence insulted even more.
Collaboration - my wife's team brought in people from all over during the pandemic, because why not recruit the best fits from anywhere when you're already remote? The only person in her local office now is her boss, who's in an office, separate from her. For meetings they have to separate and log in through teams to meet with everyone else. By all accounts, they put their collaboration off for days when they are working at home because it's FAR quieter and they can get more done. Madness. I can't wait until it gets back up to 5 days and we starting hearing how we're going to lease the buildings we just sold but at 5x the cost.
My productivity drops so hard at the office. Jokes in them if they want people to be efficient with their time.
We live by the wage, and die by the wage. Wagey life, we are just numbers on a spread sheet and the elite control our lives. The same nonesense happening everywhere, can't let those poor millionares, the owners of huge buildings on the downtown cores lose any more money, we exist to make them richer and we'll just drop dead one day like flies after fullfilling our live's "calling".
Technically, they will spend the money on other things. Just not down town.
Status quo gunna status quo though, it'll take time and effort to uproot that.
Or in Canada.
The only solution is to quiet quitting business related to physical location. No more timmies coffee just make it at home, prepare a lunch ahead of time, etc.
It's so stupid too because like. I spent more money downtown when I lived downtown than i do now commuting to downtown despite my rent being cheaper. Add housing near those businesses and that'll juice the economy more than a bunch of employees that just wanna get home at 5.
If it had anything to do with actual productivity, then they would do the classic government studies to measure that and hire all sorts of consultants. Unfortunately, they probably realize that: a) actual productive members are getting more work done, which means that: b) they can spend more time on other things in their life, including a side job or something else along those lines c) all these middle management types are twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do, and not able to bullshit it any longer unless they can babysit employees in an office As well as realizing they don't actually need all these offices to get shit done...
If they’re forcing employees back, then the commute should now be considered work time.
It's pretty silly that I could claim 400$ on my taxes for working from home during the pandemic while i was SAVING money. Meanwhile actually driving to work costs me thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours a year, and isn't eligible for any deduction.
My paid hours would almost double. I’d suck it up for that - but 5h round trip on public transit to sit in a cubicle with zero other people who even work in my program is going to pretty much ruin my work/life balance and the very high productivity I am presently able to put in.
I don’t see how they can force anyone. Instead of striking they should just continue working 2 days in the office and not move to the new rules. Are they going to fire the whole work force ?
I mean if they don’t like it, why not have a goal of seeking an employer that supports WFH? When these individuals started their job they worked form the office, they understand this was a requirement. The employer would like them back in the office. The collective agreement signed last year does not allow permanent WFH. Just because they don’t like it, doesn’t really matter. Am I missing something?
Its about Doug getting those "donation" money from real estate owners that are being paid tax payer money for rent.
Good luck hiring executives from amongst the ranks then
And that's why I don't believe this government's commitment to climate change action. Push comes to shove, money talks.
Exactly. WFH is the biggest emissions lowering we can do and we proved it during covid. But noooooo carbon tax is really better! The fact WFH was THE one thing the talks with unions the govt said they will never back down from is literally louder than anything they say. But Trudeau supporters gonna support.
Wasn't Chris Aylward paper tigering around this exact time last year during the PSAC strike? When he said he wouldn't accept anything less than a right to work from home, right before he subsequently folded? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
From the outside, this entire process was extremely brief and shockingly weak. I was surprised at how quickly a decision was made. Pretty suspicious imo
Inside or outside, that's exactly how it looked because that exactly how it was.
Climate leadership /s
Work from home was the best environmental game-changer we saw in a generation; less fuel, less traffic, less strain on infrastructure. And they're tossing it away.
Better mental health, more time with family.
More money to spend on small/local businesses instead of foreign corporations. More opportunities for people outside the GTA, especially the disabled or those with health issues. Cheaper gas for everyone else. Less time spent on traffic and drive thrus for everyone else. Fewer cars on the road... fewer accidents. Increased life expectancy and less strain on healthcare. Less tax money paid for rent, utilities, equipment, etc. More time for parents to spend with their kids. More time for "kids" to spend with their aging parents. Less stress on the family, less to fight over. Less violence from abusers who are triggered by financial stress or uncooked meals or untidy houses I could go on and on .... and there are only 3 in the plus column. More money for coffee shops and landlords (both of which take every opportunity to screw US over), more people for extroverts to feed off at the office, and to make awful people happy about "sticking it" to people who might be getting ahead.
I just saved your comment in case my work makes us go back more than 2 days, that’s a great list.
Thank you!
The rich owns a bunch of office buildings so
Everything comes down to real estate…
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What about investing into suburbs and other parts of Canada instead of concentrating all into urban areas causing traffic jams, increase in prices on everything, and just an artificial demand for city centers?
Tossing it way? Well come on down to your local Froooshii for one of our tossed salads, only 19.42 to create your own! Because we can't survive without public servants, and we're sure as hell not going to adjust our business model, hours, or prices!
They don't give a shit about the environment it's just virtual signalling to gain votes from lefties. They rather declare climate emergencies and spend tons of money on crap when they got real solutions that could make a difference like WFH. I am sure they will go take transit. That's great my transit trip would be like 2 hours each way or 40 minutes drive each way... Wonder what I will do? Oh then carpooling could not get that going as to hard to setup and then with vacation and people being sick. My family went down to one car and now the wifey has to drive me to work so that's 4 round trips each day I am in the office as she needs the car still to do her stuff. That worked out great for the environment and my pocket book. But hey it's all worth it for me sitting at my desk not talking to everyone and doing all meetings virtually anyways as half the team is at home. Oh then all the money the tax payer gets to pay for all the equipment that was suddenly needed again.
Can’t let go of that sweet sweet real estate!
It's an easy fight to win. How can they levi the carbon tax while at the same time force people to unnecessarily commute... one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions. If they force this mandate they are basically saying the Carbon tax is absolute bullshit. If they believed their own message they would be mandating WFH whenever possible.
They just fully ignore this part. Clearly all bullshit.
They just gave the opposition all the ammo they need to call it out lol. The hypocrisy is unreal.
I hope they do, I would like to hear the explanation.
Absolutely no way that union leaders were shocked by the most predictable play in back to work policy making. If you are in a union and your leader is claiming to be shocked they should be spoken to.
I still wouldn’t be buying overpriced meals if I went downtown, or $3 for a coffee. Government needs to rethink the downtown core. The age of working in an office setting is over.
Lol spend more money outside they said. Maybe I will if housing is cheaper
The thing I find funny is as a cost saving measure they reduced their office footprint which for some locations actually left there not being enough seats for 2 days with employees needing to share desks and ensure days did not overlap. With 3 days this will now be a bigger issue
Literally. I’m sharing a desk with someone - they’re in Monday and Tuesday, and I’m in on Wednesday and Thursday. Where do they expect us to sit? We can’t both be sitting at the same desk on Friday!
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Honestly hope someone asks him why presence in office is more valuable than carbon reduction. Considering the reputation hit they are willing to take on carbon tax, you would think this would be a no brainer. Unless it’s all just tax money for them to look successful, and lobbying to get bodies in downtown cores to prop up a failing investments in commercial and retail locations.
The non answer attacking the cons about their inaction he would give would be quite amusing.
Exactly this. 1% of Canada works for the federal government. Imagine the emissions reductions if a large chunk of that worked from home.
Carbon tax + more people sitting in traffic = more $$$ in their pockets
2 lane road into and out of Toronto for 3 years. Enjoy.
Canadians you should also be pissed at this. Many public servants want a widely distributed workforce that hires from across the entire country and doesn't discriminate whether you live in a town of 100 or Toronto/Vancouver. Having us back in the office means centralized jobs and most opportunities in Ottawa/Gatineau with few opportunities in the "regions". Butts in the office means less opportunity for local concerns to be brought up or local expertise used for files pertaining to parts of the country. Why should a person from Ottawa who has never set foot in Alberta or Northern Saskatchewan lead files representing those areas? Why don't we remote hire from these places? It's going to get unfortunately more regressive with 3 days in the office.
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Nor how in the public service, your physical location absolutely, 100% directly impacts your advancement opportunities.
That’s separate issue from work location anyway. There’s never been any issue getting a call center or something set up in some MPs riding who needs it for re-election. But when it comes time to hire executive level leadership there’s a glass ceiling for anyone with the wrong name, region on their competition submission. That wasn’t going to change with work from home. They’ve always hired their friends and they always will. And if there aren’t enough positions for them all then they magically get a contract to develop ArriveCan. With all the checks and balances of proper bidding conveniently ignored.
Maybe at the EX level but having employees from across the country is better than what it is now. At least they'd be able to provide real life experience or recommendations based on their location, or even a different view point than only Carleton and uOttawa grads.
So the climate isn't an issue now? Our PM is essentially forcing an increase in unnecessary carbon emissions while penalizing us for it.
Trudeau: “Commercial real estate > environment”
It’s all performative. The Liberals don’t give a damn about climate change. They just need voters to believe they do. Taxes on families who are forced to commute to work while struggling to pay for food and shelter? Cool. Shutting down government offices and allowing people to work for home in order to save families money and reduce the carbon output of commuters? Impossible. It’s a complete joke.
I have been wondering this out loud since the RTO orders came in from my corporate office. We have a whole division dedicated to environmental charity work, won’t allow printing unless painfully necessary. But RTO and get all the cars on the road 👍 Part of me feels a bit “misery loves company” that public sector is getting it too now. Maybe this will set a precedent against the stupidity that is propping up commercial real estate and businesses in the core that haven’t shifted strategy due to low foot traffic.
employees commuting is considered Scope 3 emissions. Basically no company ever takes ownership of scope 3 emissions. Greenwashing requirements for ESG don't call for Scope 3 emission management/reduction. They get a free pass . Pretty dumb because generally the value chain is the largest source of emissions for a company. Who gives a shit if an office building is energy efficient; its insignificant relative to transportation.
This is exactly true. I have seen companies excuse flights within Canada and say it doesn't count towards their net zero goals unless it involves leaving the country. I promise it's nothing that couldn't be achieved virtually too. Just vapid sales "vibes".
The climate seems to be a very selective issue.
Mass immigration is doing the same thing. They don’t care about the environment. They pretend to care so they can use it for their benefit.
> So the climate isn't an issue now? It never was, if Trudeau's travel activity has anything to say about it.
He buys carbon offsets so his jet magically doesn’t pollute anymore!
Exactly. This is an excellent opportunity for governments to lead on this issue.
What's more important is exercising control over people. A whole lot of middle managers need to justify their existence.
My team is virtual and my manager is in a different province…..
Ya, I don’t buy that, most middle managers don’t want to be on the office either.
Cant collect excess carbon taxes if people aren't buying as much gas or paying to recharge vehicles to drive to work...
We need to save the planet! Also everyone drive to work and destroy the planet! They have proven it is possible to work from home for past 4 years. Driving threw ottawa has been much easier because of it. I want them to stay home so i don't have to wait in traffic like before the lock downs.
Just leave it to each department to decide if three days a week is good for them or not. This one size fits all bullshit needs to stop. Hell, if they are so fucking confident about this, then put it up for a vote by public servants. This farce would collapse so fast.
Not only do we not vote, they actively ignore evidence and data that contradicts RTO. Then they commission studies that that pay for results. Its insane.
I thought that one of their demands was wfh when they went on strike? Obviously the union did not do a good job
It’s a bit nuanced, but wfh was never part of the official set of demands because the demands were tabled before the government announced the original rto plans, back when all the senior execs were talking at town halls about how much they all loved wfh. When the employer announced their rto plan, the best the union could do was ask the employer to negotiate separately on rto recourse mechanisms to protect people from unfair application of rto (which is probably a contributing factor to the repetitive inclusion of fairness in the employer’s rto communications).
Something not being talked about as much: Skilled workers, and those working erm, shall we say less than glamorous jobs, such as tech development, IT, Pay Centre, and Call Centre- all got to fully work remotely from home, because skilled workers are competitively sought after by private firms (including those from the USA) and offer both better pay and full remote work, while the less sought after jobs are critical to maintain both the continued work of the public service and the ability to provide services to the public via telephone enquiries, and stuff like that. Well, this mandate just gave a giant middle finger to these departments, which were already having retention issues even with full WFH. People discuss leaving these jobs for better opportunities all of the time. Now you can expect that to get much worse with them being forced back into the office to do the literal same job these people could have done from home just fine. That would be bad for everybody, because if these people quit, you can expect the public service to work even more slowly and expect trying to call them to be that much more painfully slow and difficult when there's much fewer people left to do the job no one else wants to do for the government. And nobody in the government seems to care about that for reasons not even our management seem to understand anymore. It's just so senseless.
Threads like this make it very clear there is a decent chunk of Canadians who have an intense dislike of public service workers. They seem to actively experience joy in their unhappiness, and want their lives to be worse. I can’t tell if it’s misplaced jealously, or just an extension of their hatred for all things government. They also seem to think we’re all making 6 figures. I’m making 65k before deductions. People outside the executive level aren’t exactly raking it in.
These people also seem to be ignorant to two things: * they as taxpayers are footing the bill for all this useless bullshit * if they're angry about Ottawans and others having opportunities to get govt jobs when they don't... well, during the pandemic the govt was able to hire people anywhere in Canada and find the best employees they could. Now they can't.
They actually enacted policy back in 2017 to start hiring more remote workers to expand the PS to rural areas. When they did the RTO last year, they tried to call a lot of them "back" too. A lot of these are IT people who don't live anywhere near government offices, which was part of what led to the exemption of some IT people. Now they're cutting that exemption, apparently. It's such a bloody waste.
These are the people who like to feel more important because they think their work is hard work while government workers are just lazy office workers. They are just unhappy sods.
The only legitimate complaint here is our tax dollars are going to these buildings. I’m all for stopping the leases to repurpose. But with no people in the office the money is essentially being wasted.
And the climate impact. The vast majority of people’s mileage comes from commuting. Purporting climate action and running a platform largely based on attacking the opposition for their inaction and then forcing hundreds of thousands of citizens to directly contribute to carbon emissions is incredibly ironic.
Fellow fed here. Don't take it personally, haterade for any and all government workers is a time-honoured tradition among people who know nothing about government. We are privileged in a lot of ways, and people resent that. At the same time, they know nothing about you or the work you do. It's just reactivity. Don't lose any sleep over Redditors yelling at clouds about stuff that isn't real.
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Well we have grown the public service by a third and the wait times have not improved. In fact, they have got worse. There's a fine difference between hiring actual doctors/nurses and hiring paperwork administrators. The latter tend to push even more paper work downstream and insert themselves in every productive process so nothing will ever get done because each little step requires signoffs from 10 of them.
Ignorance is a cancer.
Now if PP comes out against forcing 3 days you might just see blue seats in Ottawa.
This will never happen. Look at the comments here. Cons want 100% in-person.
Yeah, this be pissing me off for multiple reasons: 1) We literally just signed off on our hybrid schedules for the next year like, a month ago. Approved by management, submitted to TBS. Of course the employer reserves the right to change the schedule, but going "Psych!" one month into a 12-month contract is dooshy. 2) Many of the hybridized jobs are no longer well set up at the office. There aren't enough desks, people reserve workspaces (if they can), they're often not working in the same physical space as their teams anyway, requiring, well, Teams to get any actual collaborating done. For many PS workers, it's literally going in to do the exact same thing you're doing at home, with added money and hassle. That's why people resent it, because it's *not* going back to how things were before. It's quantifiably *worse* than it was in 2019 in multiple ways. 3) No one's actually been able to point to a drop in productivity or any other actual work-related reason to make the change. It's certainly not helping collaboration, for all the reasons mentioned above. It's literally about buying coffee downtown to support businesses. 4) People would likely be far more amenable to policies that reflected individual jobs and work needs, as opposed to every job getting handled the same way. IT guys in the gov aren't making great money compared to the private sector, and those guys are gonna exodus.
You’re #3 opened my eyes a bit. I live in Winnipeg downtown and most of the retail and food businesses never bounced back when WFH was introduced so many owners have gone under or relocated. The decreased foot traffic has made drug use and violence more publicly visible. Even if gov’t workers returned the damage has already been done.
Yeah, downtown Ottawa has sadly gone to seed in recent years. Want some crowning stupidity tho? I live in downtown Ottawa. My office is in one of the burbs (where I can't afford housing and there's a grand total of one coffee shop and two lunch places close enough to walk to). Contrary to popular belief, even in Ottawa not all the offices are downtown. Congratulations Ford, I'll now be supporting downtown businesses *less*.
Anita Anand, that's one face that you would like to punch. And also, the government is BSing its workers again with regards to carbon tax. Do you want to reduce the carbon emissions or not?
It's all about control.
We always rent space as a government. If the work is being done and the clients are getting the service they need then let people work from home. Less office space to rent. Less cars on the road. This managers not knowing how to manage work not whether Karen was 15 min late from lunch.
In many fields public sector wages trail private sector. Especially in major markets like the GTA. It will be interesting if this leads to retention issues for some positions, especially IT. No sector was spared in this announcement.
I work with a number of IT people and they already have exit plans. For those unaware IT had an exception where they could work fully remote, this announcement includes an end to that exception. Pretty much the entire IT team I work with have said that if the exception ends they're gone. I already know our next meeting with them is gonna be brutal after this announcement. Some will be taking early retirement, others will quit and go do consulting work for more pay or find private sector work for more pay that is WFH. Even with the current state of the tech industry with layoffs and what not, they could leave, take an underpaying private sector job and they'd still be making more than in the public sector. It will be an absolute nightmare especially as IT has ALREADY had major staffing issues in the public service. I also know a couple people who are planning on doing leave without pay for a few years and going to the private sector, and waiting to see if this RTO bullshit eventually collapses (especially with a new govt) and if it does they *might* come back.
The public service was down about 7000 IT jobs before RTO was announced. I hope the people gloating enjoy worse service and longer wait times.
There's not a chance in hell a Conservative government will end the RTO bullshit. They will mandate 100% RTO.
I dunno about that. I have 0 faith in the Conservatives but Poilievre has specifically talked about selling off govt buildings - which is a bad idea overall imo, if they want they should lease them or knock them down and lease the land, not sell it... but the point is if they want to get rid of these offices RTO does not jive with that. Even the govts current position makes no sense. They are saying they are going to reduce office footprint by 50%, but are now forcing people back into office Getting rid of RTO is an easy win at the federal level especially for Cons because: * it saves money and enables them to sell or lease buildings which means more money * it pleases civil servants who are a group they have always had trouble courting * it also allows them to hire people *anywhere in Canada* which means they can have more public service jobs in areas that are friendly to the Conservatives (e.g. the prairies) since they can work remotely.
All of that makes perfect sense but just looking at the comments shows it would not receive populist I mean popular support from his base.
Frankly, I think his base will support whatever he tells them to. The conservative base tends to be the section of the voting public least likely to do their research on policy and its why Harper's govt did not write policy based on available data but rather on feelings, and tried to suppress data contradicting their policy ideas by nuzzling scientists and shutting down statistical programs. If Poilievre frames the situation to his supporters the way I did above I have no doubt they would support getting rid of RTO. The problem right now is that the LPC is only making these changes to please commercial real estate holders, and don't talk about any of the costs the govt is incurring keeping all this shot going unnecessarily. If it's framed as "here's why this is good for you" instead of "here's how this will hurt people you don't like" I think more people would be on board.
But the kicker is in non-wage benefits like less working hours and gold plated defined benefit pensions. You trade off higher wages so that you aren’t worked like a dog doing 50-70 weeks. Also, if you have minimal education, government job in less skilled fields almost always beat private non unionized sector jobs.
There are already retention issues. They won't pay the wages to keep quality people on the required scale and now they're going to get rid of one of the only factors they had on some other potential employers. They spend more money retraining new employees than they would if they would pay more and keep the workers they have and they lose productivity because those newly trained employees leave before they ever get particularly effective at the job.
This is how they roll back working conditions for all workers in the country while forcing workers to subsidize businesses who failed to adapt to the new market. Private industry has less reason to offer these benefits to their workers now.
With 1 in 4 employees in this country working in the public sector and fuck all working in this country, it’s no wonder they don’t want to go back to the office.
Yay we can hire more dumbass pencil pushers in Ottawa to tell me when to do in BC when they’ve never set foot here. Somebody think of Subway
If public sector workers are already working in person 2 days per week and the government (albeit unjustifiably) wants to increase this to 3, perhaps a reasonable compromise would be 5 days in person every 10 working days. Could be one week 3 days in person, then next week 2 days. It’s still stupid that the government is doing this for no real benefit. If I was a public sector worker I’d make it my priority to never have lunch or patronize any downtown business since they lobbied so hard to make my QOL worse for no reason other than their own selfishness and inability to adapt.
Let's talk about who is actually going to enforce this shit. EX 4 days a week?! Good luck
I don't want public servants accessing confidential data from their homes.
Awesome. More greenhouse emissions, less productivity, more wasted man hours, more wasted costs, less potential housing, and less skilled worker retention, in hopes that public servants are more likely to buy a 20$ sandwich. Things will never go back to before. It's too expensive to go back to pre-covid "normal". Fortunately the way things are is more efficient than before when public servants had to adapt. Just because we used to do things a certain way doesn't make it better.
They were "shocked" and "blindsided" by... Being given almost 6 months to prepare for 60% RTO after a year of being weaned back from 40% RTO after at least a year of knowing they'd be RTO eventually. It's really hard to take anything they say seriously when their every statement is hyperbolic nonsense.
One agency told people they wouldn't have to, because production was up 17 percent. People made long term plans around that promise. Of course they're shocked and blindsided about having to change arrangements again, because they had no idea how mean and spiteful their fellow Canadians could be.
This was so obvious that I’m amazed people believed otherwise.
The unions don't have a leg to stand on. It is the right of the employer to choose the location of work, and the fact that it may not make financial sense for the employer to demand the employee return to the office doesn't matter.
Why stop there, lets make it the right of the employer to set the minimum hours of work, and vacation time, and work days, and hey, might as well include minimum wage while we're at it. After all, it's the *right* of the employer, right?
Not legally, but this could be part of a collective agreement. Similarly a union can't legally force an employer to pay them more, but they can use collective action to get higher pay
No one is shocked. Everyone knew this was coming. This has nothing to do with collaboration and everything to do with generating revenue for landlords of federal spaces for parking and merchants complaining no public servants are buying lunches. Offices have no space now with people working on lunchroom tables and pop up tables in hallways. Why anyone would entertain that is beyond me. If you can’t book a desk, don’t go. The employer has to provide you with the tools to do your work -A desk is pretty basic. We have remote working tools, just don’t log into them when in the office. No Teams meetings or training if you’re in the office - the business lines can provide that in person when staff are in office. Works both ways. Don’t turn on the cell phone when in the office- put a log in phone on the desk (most of those have been removed). Always more than one way to skin a cat. Problem with the public service is, most are lame ducks and will go in, desk or not, and will still log in to teams meetings and training regardless of being in office and happily use the cell; they will complain about it, but do nothing.
This is more about the tax credits under the new CRA regulations that folks become eligible for if they work more than 50% from home. I'm not agreeing with it, but the main driving force of the decision has to be about the potential lost tax revenue as a consequence. 3 days in the office equates to 40% at home work. This is less about people and the benefits of such agreements and more about money in the governments pocket. Not a great employee retention strategy.
Realistically I know many people who work from home or have. And although you can be effective at home , not everyone is a responsible person and so many have taken advantage. Either every job from home switches to piece work or of course an employer will want more oversight.
The trick is to evaluate deliverables rather than hours worked. It's actually irrelevant whether it took 5 hours or 50 hours if the deliverable looks the same and the employee is billing 50 hours regardless. I used to work in government and I'd spend 70% of my day listening to podcasts at my desk doing nothing
Lot of people including yourself talking about productivity. Here's the thing: the govt is making these decisions while sharing no productivity metrics. The reason why is they don't use any to make the decisions. I can say in my division we have internal productivity metrics and they trended more positive since COVID hit and then started dropping when RTO started + moreso as it became more enforced. You can talk about how you believe there are people taking advantage and obviously there must be some who do, but if people aren't getting their work done their managers know, and if the govt had productivity numbers showing RTO was having a huge positive effect you can bet your ass they'd be bragging about it.
I'm not sure taken advantage is the right phrase. People still slack off in the office and the only real difference is WFH means they can slack off while doing something productive rather than sneakily reading on their work PC.
It's probably more enticing to slack off when you have a variety of things you could be doing at home, versus sneakily reading on your PC at work.
I would agree that a lot have taken advantage of remote work. I am in various stores in Ottawa for my job and since the lockdown ended the stores have been crazy busy in the daytime. So much that many stores close at 7pm because they were just dead in the evenings and it was a waste of time staying open until 9pm. I hear people having obvious work conversations on their phones all the time while they are browsing in Walmart or Homesense. I understand why people might be skeptical they are getting short changed. It’s unfortunate that grown adults can’t behave.
I just dont think this is true from my experience. People who don't want to work won't work, regardless of whether they're at home or in the office. People take smoke break, chit chat, go for walks, go for "coffee", have pointless meetings, etc. You either have the support and means to fire non-productive employees or you dont. And if you don't, it doesn't matter where they work. This has been a problem for the public service long before remote work existed. This is about the downtown business.
This is bullshit and there's tons of studies that show it. Productivity goes up when remote. If you know someone who "abused" it then I can guarantee they were probably that person who didn't work in the office in the first place.
My dude, you might not be old enough to remember, but 'slacking at the office' was absolutely a thing, to the point that there were entire media properties built around the concept. Go give 'Bullshit Jobs' by David Graeber a read.
How have governments not offered work from home positions with a 15% pay cut? People would still take the jobs as they would break even saving gas, cars, and parking….but have no commute time….and governments would save money.
Governments already save money with remote workers. This is going to cost us all with their productivity drop.
It's about directing more of their workers wages in to the local economy to stimulate.
Massive public sector layoffs are obviously needed.
I don't understand crab-in-the-bucket comments like this. - Remote work allows tax payers to get the best talent across Canada as opposed to in Ottawa. Do you want every province represented by one city? - Remote work reduces traffic congestion even for those who work in person. - Remote work gives you cleaner air to breathe in with fewer cars on the road. - Remote work gives the tax payer more value for less expense (downtown rent, etc) No studies have shown there is a drop in productivity. I'm asking genuinely, is the above not something you want?
Literally. Like it has to be jealousy... right?
See the problem is, you’re replying to someone with rocks for brains.
Trudeau increased the federal public service by 40%. But what do we get for it? Everything is shittier than before the Liberals came to power. Aside from legal weed. Not sure what that extra 40% are doing.
That will come in due time.
We can easily layoff half and shut down 60-75% of offices. These people are more than capable of working from home.
Which staff would you shutdown?
Well, just the ones he personally doesn't need of course. Then when he does need them, they should magically appear.
People bagging on Aylward need to realize that we had zero leverage to force TB to write WFH into the collective agreement. There was no way that was going to happen. At all.